Bringing Up Father

Cliff Sterrett's four-panel daily strip follows Jiggs returning home at 2 A.M., relieved that wife Maggie is asleep — only to find she's summoned Dr. Graves. He hustles the doctor away before Maggie wakes, paying him off with a breezy "send the bill to my office." The gag turns on domestic evasion: Jiggs the incorrigible husband, Maggie the feared enforcer, a recurring engine that ran from 1913 well into mid-century. George McManus drew *Bringing Up Father*; Sterrett's byline here likely reflects syndicate crediting conventions of the era. These dailies — distributed by International News Service — were the direct raw material from which comic books were born: clipped, reprinted, and eventually bound, they established panel sequencing, speech balloons, and character continuity as the medium's foundational grammar.