Bringing Up Father

George McManus's *Bringing Up Father* ran daily and Sunday from 1913 until McManus's death in 1954, making it one of the longest-lived strips in American newspaper history. This January 27, 1925 daily strip unfolds in four panels: Jiggs, the Irish immigrant turned nouveau-riche social climber, has been locked in his room by his imperious wife Maggie. He phones friend Dinty Moore, asking him to fetch a hidden key from under the doormat and throw it—tied to a brick—up to his window. Panel two shows Dinty poised outside, ready to throw; panel three, an explosion of stars as the brick crashes through the wrong window; panel four, a dazed Dinty asking whether he hit the right one. McManus's draftsmanship—rounded figures, elegant Art Nouveau interiors, expressive motion lines—helped standardize the visual vocabulary of sequential panels and speech balloons that the nascent comic-book industry would directly inherit.