Bringing Up Father — 1919-07-16

Four panels track Jiggs's domestic comedy: he hides a rolling pin so wife Maggie can't reach it, then cautiously asks permission to go out; she receives a delivery of a dozen rolling pins from the grocer, and Jiggs concludes he'd better not sneak out tonight if he wants to come home tomorrow. McManus draws in a clean, rounded line with patterned wallpaper and striped upholstery adding visual texture. Launched in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* ran for nearly a century and was among the most widely syndicated strips in the world. Daily and Sunday newspaper strips like this one — with their repeating characters, sequential panels, and speech balloons — formed the direct template from which the comic book format evolved in the 1930s.