Polly and Her Pals — April 20, 1922

Four panels track a domestic exchange between Polly and her rotund, flower-hatted mother, Ma, over Pa's photograph proofs. Ma is aghast that Pa wore his old clothes — and, worse, managed only one button on his vest. Pa, slouched in an armchair surrounded by framed pictures, cheerfully admits he noticed the missing button, which is precisely why he had the photos taken. Sterrett's linework is loose and rubbery, his figures built from exaggerated curves; speech balloons guide the eye cleanly left to right. *Polly and Her Pals*, launched in 1912, was among the first daily strips to develop a recurring ensemble cast, helping establish the serial domestic comedy as a newspaper staple whose page layouts directly shaped the format and visual grammar inherited by comic books two decades later.