Bringing Up Father — 1916-12-09

Four panels, bench setting: Jiggs and a white-haired acquaintance debate Prohibition's approach. The stranger predicts the whole country will go dry; Jiggs, ever the saloon-loving Irish immigrant made good, grows visibly agitated — stars and shock-lines flying — finally retorting that he's 'gittin' dryer every second listenin'' to the man talk. McManus draws in his signature thick-outlined style, figures rotund and expressive, speech balloons integrated cleanly into the composition. *Bringing Up Father*, launched by McManus in 1913 for King Features, became one of the most widely syndicated strips in the world. These newspaper dailies — with their recurring characters, sequential panels, and balloon dialogue — were the direct formal ancestors of the comic book, establishing conventions still in use today.