Polly and Her Pals — October 19, 1922

Six panels track a confrontation between Spike—Polly's pugnacious father—and a squat, bowler-hatted antagonist named Paw. Spike storms off muttering about an insult, is restrained by a woman urging him not to make a scene, then squares up to demand whether Paw said something behind his back. Paw's deflecting answer—"Nuthin' I wouldn't say to yer face"—triggers an absurdist punchline: he blows a stream of smoke directly into Spike's face. The strip closes with two women exclaiming in the doorway. Sterrett's draftsmanship is already confident here—fluid ink lines, expressive silhouettes, rhythmic panel pacing. *Polly and Her Pals*, launched 1912 in the *New York Evening Telegram*, became one of the most formally inventive strips of the era, anticipating cubist composition in its Sunday pages and helping fix the recurring-cast domestic comedy as a newspaper staple.