Bringing Up Father — 1922-03-05

George McManus's *Bringing Up Father* ran as a syndicated Sunday page from 1913 until McManus's death in 1954, making it one of the longest-running strips in American newspaper history. This twelve-panel page follows the hapless Jiggs—parvenu Irish-American husband—through a farcical chain involving a burglar, a society matron named Lady De Bility, a neck injury, a jail-relief committee, and a fifty-dollar shakedown. McManus drew in a clean, decorative line influenced by Art Nouveau, with floral wallpapers and patterned furniture filling every background. The strip exemplifies the Sunday full-page format that trained readers to follow sequential panels and speech balloons—visual conventions newspaper artists like McManus, Outcault, and Dirks codified before the first comic book was ever bound and sold.