Bringing Up Father — 1925-02-26

Four panels follow the familiar domestic comedy of Jiggs and Maggie: a telegram arrives from a 'dear brother,' Maggie immediately suspects a money touch, reads that he needs fifty dollars to preserve the family honor, grandly tells Jiggs to let him have it — then erupts at the sum. The final panel shows Jiggs battered and sprawled among crockery shards, explaining that the telephone is the only safe way to speak with her. McManus's draftsmanship is fluid and confident, his characters rounded and expressive, the speech balloons locked cleanly into each panel's rhythm. *Bringing Up Father* launched in 1913 and ran for decades, syndicated globally — one of the strips whose disciplined panel-by-panel storytelling and recurring cast helped establish the visual grammar that daily newspaper comics handed directly to the first comic book publishers in the 1930s.