Bringing Up Father — 1917-08-22

Four panels follow Jiggs, the Irish-immigrant social climber in his military uniform, as a tall dandy in checked trousers offers to show him how to fight and escorts him to a bar called Dinty's — only to learn soldiers in uniform won't be served. The dandy promptly hurls Jiggs through the door anyway; Jiggs departs cheerfully promising to return. George McManus's linework is crisp and theatrical: exaggerated silhouettes, speech balloons integrated cleanly into panel space, and a recurring cast whose body language alone carries the comedy. McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, and its long daily run helped standardize the domestic-comedy strip as a newspaper staple — the syndicated daily strip being the direct commercial ancestor of the assembled comic book reprint collections that followed in the 1930s.