Bringing Up Father

Four panels follow Jiggs, the newly-rich Irish-American laborer, and his imperious wife Maggie through a familiar domestic skirmish. A confidant tips Jiggs to complain about the food so he can escape to eat out; at the dinner table Maggie serves something inedible; Jiggs notes it tastes like free lunch; Maggie concedes even she can't eat it — friend Dinty Moore sent it over — so both go out. George McManus launched the strip in 1913, his fluid Art Nouveau linework and expressive balloon lettering becoming a template for daily comic pacing. These newspaper dailies — continuous characters, sequential panels, punch-line final beat — were the direct structural ancestors of the comic book, proving that recurring working-class characters could anchor a strip across decades.