Bringing Up Father — 1919-07-07

Four panels follow Jiggs, the newly-rich Irish-American social climber, as he settles into an armchair the moment his wife Maggie leaves to go shopping. A doorbell rouses him: a delivery man presents a fifty-dollar C.O.D. hat, then a second man arrives with another C.O.D. package. Jiggs flees the house in panic, muttering he'd end up in the poorhouse if he stayed another hour. McManus's clean pen line, expressive silhouettes, and brisk balloon placement exemplify the daily-strip format he helped standardize after *Bringing Up Father* launched in 1913. These syndicated dailies—printed in millions of papers simultaneously—were the direct commercial and formal ancestors of the comic book, establishing recurring characters, sequential panel grammar, and the gag-strip rhythm that defined American popular cartooning for decades.