Polly and Her Pals — 1922-11-18

Four panels, black ink: Polly asks Pop what Grandfather was like; Pop calls him "a pip." A second figure asks whether father and grandfather resembled each other; Pop, increasingly flustered, insists they were "the image of me at my age" — provoking cries of "Shame!" from the room. The strip closes with someone admonishing him never to speak ill of the departed. Cliff Sterrett launched *Polly and Her Pals* in 1912 for the New York Evening Telegram, later syndicated nationally. His elastic figure work, inventive panel geometry, and sharp domestic comedy influenced a generation of cartoonists. These syndicated daily and Sunday strips — alongside Herriman's *Krazy Kat* and McManus's *Bringing Up Father* — supplied the page layouts, speech-balloon conventions, and recurring-cast storytelling that early comic-book publishers would directly repackage beginning in the 1930s.