Bringing Up Father — January 26, 1925

George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, and by the mid-1920s it ran in hundreds of papers worldwide. This four-panel daily follows Jiggs — the nouveau-riche Irish immigrant who can never escape his wife Maggie's social ambitions — as he packs a bag for a trip. Maggie orders him to pack his bathrobe; he insists he needs no help; a small boy outside then offers to carry his grips, and Jiggs sheepishly admits he left them at home. McManus's brushwork is elegant: swirling dress patterns on Maggie, precise cross-hatching, and speech balloons that drive the deadpan timing. Strips like this one trained readers in the visual grammar — sequential panels, recurring characters, punch-line final beat — that daily newspaper comics handed directly to the first comic books of the 1930s.