Bringing Up Father — 1917-08-21

Four panels follow Jiggs, McManus's stout, henpecked husband, as he announces he has enlisted. His wife Maggie, enthroned in a patterned armchair, listens with cool skepticism while Jiggs rhapsodizes about returning covered in medals and fighting for country — not fame. Maggie punctures his patriotic speech by noting he ought to be proud to stop loitering at Dinty Moore's saloon; the strip closes with Jiggs asking to go out that night and receiving a flat "NO!!" George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913 and ran it for decades, developing the visual shorthand — sequential panels, expressive speech balloons, consistent character silhouettes — that newspaper comic strips were handing directly to the first comic book anthologists of the 1930s.