Bringing Up Father — 1917-07-28

George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, building it around Irish immigrant Jiggs—a newly rich bricklayer—and his social-climbing wife Maggie. This daily strip runs six panels: a reporter from the *Daily Splash* seeks an interview with the seated, cigar-smoking Jiggs, who deflects with drink offers before admitting he would return to bricklaying if poor again—'because there's so many days that brick-layers don't work.' The punchline lands with a physical pratfall in the final panel. McManus drew in a clean, rounded line with expressive gestural staging; his recurring characters and consistent balloon placement helped standardize the visual grammar American newspaper strips were still inventing. Syndicated dailies like this one were the direct commercial and formal ancestor of the comic book.