Bringing Up Father — 1919-07-08

Four panels: Maggie, in polka-dot housecoat, answers a late-night doorbell; a hat-in-hand caller asks for Jiggs; she reports he's "up all right," then announces she'd like to see him too — closing with the threat that when Jiggs gets home, *he is going to hear from her*, leaving the caller with a baffled question mark. McManus's line is fluid Art Nouveau turned vernacular: patterned wallpaper, expressive silhouettes, speech balloons that carry comic timing as surely as any vaudeville pause. Launched in 1913 by King Features Syndicate, *Bringing Up Father* ran in hundreds of papers simultaneously — these daily strips, collected and reprinted, were the direct commercial ancestor of the comic book format.