Polly and Her Pals — 1925-06-20

Cliff Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals* (1912–1958) is one of the longest-running American newspaper strips, and this four-panel daily shows its domestic-comedy engine in full swing. A stout, bald father reads a household bill in horror, muttering about the poorhouse; a suitor named Frank is briskly rejected by a young woman ('I wouldn't marry you on a thirty to one bet!'); father then brandishes the bill triumphantly, warning the son he hasn't seen the dressmaker's statement yet; in the final panel a figure reels backward while musical notes scatter. Sterrett's chunky brushwork and expressive crowd of speech balloons exemplify the visual grammar newspaper strips codified in the 1910s–20s — panel sequencing, recurring ensemble casts, and the balloon-as-voice that cartoonists invented and comic books inherited wholesale.