Polly and Her Pals — December 20, 1922

Cliff Sterrett's *Polly and Her Pals* ran from 1912 to 1958, making it one of the longest-lived American newspaper strips. This four-panel daily follows Pa and Ma through a financial crisis: 'Amalgamated Mops' has collapsed, leaving the family broke. Ma immediately proposes selling the car; Pa scoffs that she can simply walk to business; Ma's final panel retort — 'You'd be surprised, Susie!' — lands the punchline on Pa's wounded dignity. Sterrett's linework here is loose and kinetic, the speech balloons densely packed with period slang ('flivver,' 'paupers'). Newspaper dailies like this one — syndicated nationally, read by millions — established the recurring-character strip as America's first true mass visual narrative, the direct seedbed from which comic books grew in the 1930s.