Bringing Up Father

Four panels, black and white ink: two men in formal dress trade barbs in a sitting room. Jiggs — stout, cigar in mouth — is asked his opinion of a self-proclaimed self-made man; he obliges with blunt candor, prompting a sputtering retort and a final, deflating rejoinder: *"Are you boastin' or apologizin'?"* McManus's line work is fluid and confident — rounded figures, cross-hatched shadows, speech balloons locked neatly above each speaker. George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, running it for decades and syndicating it worldwide. Strips like this one are the direct ancestors of the comic book: recurring characters, sequential panels, integrated dialogue — the whole visual grammar assembled on newsprint before the pamphlet format existed.