Polly and Her Pals — "It May Be Expensive House-Cleaning"

Cliff Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals* daily strip follows a salesman demonstrating a 1922-model mop to Polly and her rotund, flower-hatted mother Maw, who grows increasingly enthusiastic across four panels — until the final gag reveals the family has spent all their money on the gadget rather than actually cleaning the house. Sterrett's linework is already confident: expressive silhouettes, overlapping figures, and tightly timed panel rhythm. Launched in 1912, *Polly* ran for four decades and helped codify the domestic-comedy strip formula. Newspaper dailies like this one — syndicated nationally, read at breakfast — were the direct ancestors of the comic book, carrying forward the sequential panel grammar pioneered by Outcault and McManus into millions of American homes.