Bringing Up Father — 1925-03-24

George McManus's *Bringing Up Father* follows Jiggs, a nouveau-riche Irish-American bricklayer, and his social-climbing wife Maggie. In this four-panel daily, Jiggs slips away from home under the pretense of visiting a friend, talks his way into a radio broadcast station for five minutes of airtime, and uses it to send Dinty Moore a message arranging a meeting at Dugan's Corner — Jiggs's beloved saloon haunt. The final panel shows Dinty's gleeful reply. McManus's draftsmanship is assured: top-hatted figures rendered in clean ink line, expressive silhouettes, and speech balloons that carry the comic timing. Launched in 1913 in Hearst syndication, the strip ran for decades and exemplifies how newspaper dailies invented the recurring-character serial comic — the direct ancestor of the comic book format.