From the exhibition
Bringing Up Father
· March 31, 1925
George McManus's daily strip follows Jiggs, a nouveau-riche Irish immigrant who'd rather drink with old friends than embrace his wife Maggie's social ambitions. In this four-panel strip, Jiggs, crouching near a wall muttering about needing money, is hailed by a neighbor with news that Dugan—a man on Clancy Street—has been left a fortune. Jiggs brightens: Dugan owes him fifty dollars. He strides off to collect, only to learn Dugan has gone back to Europe to collect *his* inheritance. McManus's draftsmanship is elegant—fluid figures, patterned suits, confident brushwork. Launched in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* ran for decades in syndication worldwide, its recurring characters and sequential panel grammar directly shaping the comic book form that emerged from newspaper pages in the 1930s.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain
