Polly and Her Pals — October 30, 1922

Cliff Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals* ran from 1912 until 1958, making it one of newspaper syndication's longest-lived strips. This four-panel daily, titled "Pa Needs No Further Proof," follows Pa Perkins as he interviews a suitor named Mr. Prune. When Prune asks whether insanity runs in the family, Pa erupts with delight — "Great guns! There MUST be!" — then immediately phones a hotel to reserve a room for daughter Polly, confirming his own cheerful madness. Sterrett's draftsmanship is inventive: angular figures, expressive silhouettes, and speech balloons that drive comic timing across the page. His later Sunday pages would push toward near-abstract Art Deco design. Strips like this, syndicated nationally by Newspaper Feature Service, supplied the raw reprinted material that printers assembled into the first comic books of the 1930s.