Bringing Up Father

George McManus's *Bringing Up Father* ran from 1913 to 2000, making it one of the longest-lived strips in American newspaper history. This four-panel daily follows the eternal comic collision between nouveau-riche Maggie and her hen-pecked husband Jiggs, who would rather shoot craps with old pals than climb the social ladder. Here Jiggs plans to slip out to meet his friend Dinty, Maggie intercepts him and commandeers his evening for the theatre, then uses her maid Kim as a house-sitter — only for Jiggs to phone Dinty from what he imagines is freedom. McManus's fluid Art Nouveau linework, decorative interiors, and expressive balloon lettering refined the visual grammar of sequential panels that daily newspaper strips handed directly to the first comic books of the 1930s.