Polly and Her Pals — "Pa Establishes a Safety Zone"

Cliff Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals* launched in 1912 and ran until 1958, making it one of the longest-lived newspaper comic strips. This four-panel daily shows Pa objecting to Polly's suitor Tommy: when Polly tearfully demands on what *grounds* he objects, Pa delivers the punchline — "Any grounds within a mile of this house!" Sterrett draws Pa in loud plaid trousers, Polly in a fashionable flapper dress, and deploys the strip's characteristic thick brushwork and expressive body language. The strip's recurring domestic triangle — flirtatious daughter, exasperated father — gave newspapers a reliable comedy engine. Sterrett would later push his Sunday pages toward near-abstract Art Deco design, influencing generations of cartoonists studying how a Sunday page could be architecture as much as narrative.