Bringing Up Father — 1925-04-27

George McManus's *Bringing Up Father* ran from 1913 until 1954, making it one of the longest-running and most widely syndicated daily strips in American newspaper history. This four-panel daily follows Jiggs, the stout, cigar-chomping Irish-American social climber, as he discovers his umbrella stolen at Dinty Moore's bar. A friend offers a loaner; Jiggs insists on his own. Outside, a stranger carries the missing umbrella — Jiggs recognizes it, nearly explodes with rage, then thinks better of confronting the man since doing so would reveal he'd been at the bar at all. McManus's rounded, elegantly dressed figures and clean panel staging show the draftsmanship that made *Bringing Up Father* a model for the recurring-character domestic comedy strip — a form whose syndicated daily-and-Sunday format directly seeded the anthology comic book of the 1930s.