Bringing Up Father

Four panels, black ink linework: Jiggs sits reading a newspaper while Maggie stands over him. She announces she has been thinking; he fires back that whatever scheme she has hatched—cutting out Dinty Moore's, giving up smoking—is wrong, and he intends to stay in, read books, and play golf. Maggie stares in baffled silence (a lone question mark floats overhead), then in the final panel phones a doctor, alarmed that something is wrong with her husband. George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, syndicated by King Features to hundreds of papers. Its recurring cast, continuous character arcs, and expressive balloon lettering helped codify the daily comic strip as a narrative form—direct ancestor of the comic book page.