Bringing Up Father — 1919-07-23

Six panels follow Jiggs, McManus's henpecked Irish-American social climber, as he sneaks a female visitor into the house while wife Maggie answers the doorbell. Hiding in the clothes closet, he overhears four hours of the women's gossiping — rendered through speech balloons trailing 'etc-etc-etc' — before finally staggering out, exhausted, relieved they've gone. McManus draws with elegant Art Nouveau line work: rounded, expressive figures, careful cross-hatching, and confident panel-to-panel pacing. Launched in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* ran until 2000, appearing in over 700 newspapers worldwide. Its reliable cast and domestic situation comedy established the template that would migrate, panel layout and balloon grammar intact, into the first comic book reprints of the early 1930s.