Polly and Her Pals — Daily Strip, June 16, 1925

Four panels track a neighborhood dispute: a startled man leaps from his chair after a child snips his whiskers, then confronts the mother demanding punishment, while she calmly deflects — 'I never chastise little Rufus until *after* he's done a thing!' The gag turns on inverted parental logic, delivered through chunky silhouette figures, expressive posture, and tightly nested speech balloons. *Polly and Her Pals*, launched by Cliff Sterrett in 1912 for the Hearst syndicate, was among the first newspaper strips to anchor itself to a recurring cast and domestic comedy — the daily strip format that directly fed the first comic book reprints of the 1930s, teaching readers to follow characters, absorb balloon text, and track panel-to-panel cause and effect.