Polly and Her Pals — 1917-06-29

Cliff Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals* launched in 1912 as one of the earliest recurring-cast newspaper strips, built around the Perkins household rather than its nominal star. This daily, titled "Ma Shows Pa a Little Strategy," runs five panels: Pa brandishes a baseball bat, threatening to overpower a rough opponent through "scientific training"; Ma interrupts, shrieking at a spider; Pa swats it for her; she denies the spider existed; Pa catches her contradiction — fair means or foul — and Ma, floored, announces she's destined to be "Queen of the May." Sterrett's cross-hatched, expressively bulky figures and tightly sequenced speech balloons typify the visual grammar newspaper dailies were still codifying — the same grammar that, collected into pamphlets through the 1930s, became the comic book.