Bringing Up Father

George McManus's *Bringing Up Father* launched in 1913 and ran for decades, following the nouveau-riche Jiggs and his social-climbing wife Maggie. In this four-panel daily, Jiggs fishes at a lakeside dock. A lanky stranger points out there are no fish in the lake; Jiggs airily agrees. Asked why he keeps his line in the water all day, he reveals his hook has no bait — then delivers the punchline: fishing is his escape from home chores. McManus drew in a clean, confident line with art-nouveau flourishes, his figures instantly readable. Daily strips like this one were the direct raw material of the first comic books, which reprinted newspaper pages before original content emerged — making the syndicated daily strip the true founding form of the medium.