Bringing Up Father — 1925-02-02

Four panels track the domestic misery of Jiggs, the Irish-immigrant social climber. He sits in rare peace — 'By golly, it's nice and quiet at home today' — until wailing erupts off-panel ('Bo-o-o, Ho-o-o'). His daughter sobs that she and her mother have quarreled and 'she won't speak to me.' Jiggs's reply is the strip's whole engine: 'I'll give you fifty dollars to tell me what you said — I'd like to use it!' McManus's draftsmanship is fluid and confident, the figures elegantly rounded against hatched interiors. *Bringing Up Father* launched in 1913 and ran for decades, syndicated worldwide; its recurring cast, sequential panels, and punchy balloon dialogue helped establish the visual grammar that newspaper comic pages handed directly to the first comic books of the 1930s.