Bringing Up Father

Four panels follow Jiggs, the newly rich Irish-American social climber created by George McManus, as his pal Dinty coaches him on an excuse to escape the house past his imperious wife Maggie. Jiggs rehearses the story confidently mid-street, spots Maggie on the doorstep — then blanks completely. McManus's draftsmanship is elegant: rounded, confident brushwork, immaculate crosshatching on the suits, and a beautifully timed visual comedy beat in the final panel where Jiggs stands hat-in-hand, defeated. First syndicated in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* ran for nearly nine decades. Daily strips like this one — self-contained gag sequences with recurring characters and speech balloons — were the direct template from which the comic book format was assembled, reprinted, and eventually sold as standalone pamphlets in the 1930s.