Bringing Up Father — 1919-07-12

Four panels follow Jiggs, the newly-rich Irish-American parvenu, through a compressed comic arc: his daughter warns him not to hire Mr. Jones; a young man then presents himself to Jiggs announcing he's been thinking about going to work; Jiggs offers him any job, starting at the bottom; the final panel reveals the punch — "start by taking some swimming lessons," as stars burst around the applicant's head. McManus's line is fluent Art Nouveau turned vernacular: sinuous silhouettes, patterned waistcoats, and expressive staging inside spare rectangular panels. Launched in 1913 and syndicated by King Features, *Bringing Up Father* ran daily and Sunday for decades, its recurring cast and sequential panel grammar helping establish the conventions that proto-comic-book compilers would soon bind and sell as a new medium.