ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

Bringing Up Father

· George McManus, c. 1917

Bringing Up Father
Five panels track a deadpan exchange between Jiggs and a top-hatted acquaintance. Asked whether he favors clubs for women, Jiggs quips he'd be afraid to hit Maggie with one; the visitor volleys back with talk of repartee, tea-drinking, and a bravery medal — until an off-panel Maggie launches him bodily through the air, shoes-up, leaving the final panel's rueful question: *Who does it belong to?* McManus's line work is economical and buoyant, his figures rounded and expressive, his speech balloons cleanly lettered. *Bringing Up Father* launched in 1913 and ran for decades, making Jiggs and his rolling-pin-wielding wife Maggie globally recognized figures. The daily newspaper strip — syndicated, sequential, character-driven — was the direct seedbed from which the comic book format grew.

Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain