Bringing Up Father — 1919-07-22

Six slim panels follow Maggie and a female acquaintance strolling outdoors, discussing whether Jiggs has been reading a book. Maggie boasts he left home clutching it; the final panel reveals Jiggs indoors, book abandoned, a note reading *Maggie — I have gone to the races — Jiggs* pinned to the wall. McManus's line is elegant and assured — tall, corseted women in elaborate hats, Jiggs's round silhouette — descended directly from his earlier *Newlyweds* strip. *Bringing Up Father*, launched in 1913, ran for nearly a century and was among the first American strips syndicated internationally, demonstrating how the daily newspaper page — its recurring cast, sequential panels, and speech balloons — invented the visual and narrative conventions that comic books would later inherit wholesale.