Bringing Up Father — October 23, 1921

George McManus's *Bringing Up Father* ran in syndication from 1913 until 1954, making it one of the longest-lived strips in American newspaper history. This twelve-panel Sunday page follows Jiggs, the newly rich Irish-American, as he dodges his socially ambitious wife Maggie: she sails for England while he stays behind in Spain, celebrates his freedom, reads alarming news about her ship, and ends the page checking himself into a Spanish hospital. McManus drew with elegant Art Nouveau line work — sinuous furniture, patterned wallpaper, expressive silhouettes — married to brickbat slapstick. Sunday newspaper pages like this one were the direct precursor to the comic book format, establishing the visual grammar of sequential panels, speech balloons, and recurring cast that all later comics would inherit.