Bringing Up Father — January 23, 1925

Four panels: Jiggs, the Irish-immigrant nouveau-riche husband, tells his daughter by telephone she cannot order hats C.O.D. In the next panel he warns his wife he'll 'fix' any messenger who arrives with them. Panel three: a delivery woman appears at the door with a large hatbox. Panel four: Jiggs caves. McManus draws in a fluid, rounded line descended from Art Nouveau, with confident cross-hatching and expressive silhouettes. *Bringing Up Father* launched in 1913 and ran for decades, its domestic-battle formula helping establish the recurring-character daily strip as a narrative form. These syndicated dailies — alongside Outcault's *Yellow Kid* and Dirks's *Katzenjammer Kids* — invented the visual grammar, panel sequencing, and speech-balloon conventions that comic books would later inherit wholesale.