Bringing Up Father — 1925-02-12

George McManus's daily strip follows Jiggs, the Irish-immigrant bricklayer turned nouveau-riche husband, perpetually caught between his wife Maggie's social ambitions and his own modest pleasures. In this four-panel strip, Jiggs hatches a scheme to reconcile Maggie and their daughter by inviting a count home — only to find the women already out socializing without him. The joke lands in the final panel: Jiggs sits alone, told he needn't feel bad since his in-laws aren't home either. McManus's clean ink line, expressive silhouettes, and fluid speech balloons exemplify the daily-strip grammar he helped standardize. Launched in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* ran for decades, its collected pages among the direct predecessors of the comic book format.