Bringing Up Father

Four panels, black ink, newspaper daily strip: Jiggs lies in bed bragging he's been fed brandy for two weeks as a sick man. His stout, suited visitor demands to know what he's kicking about; Jiggs confesses he was "unconscious all the time." A shapely nurse enters; the visitor exclaims "Move over!!" and climbs into the bed. George McManus's *Bringing Up Father*, launched in 1913, was among the first recurring daily comic strips to perfect the grammar still used today — rigid panel grids, integrated speech balloons, and a cast audiences followed across years. McManus's crisp ink line and elegant Art Nouveau flourishes (visible in the bedframe and figure silhouettes) influenced a generation of cartoonists. These daily newspaper strips, syndicated nationally, were the direct commercial and formal ancestors of the collected comic book.