Bringing Up Father — April 29, 1925

George McManus's long-running daily strip follows Jiggs, the Irish-immigrant social climber, through four rain-soaked panels. Jiggs congratulates himself for bringing an umbrella to protect his new hat — then wishes someone would relieve him of the cumbersome thing — then encounters a fashionably dressed acquaintance who marvels that anyone could be caught without one — and finally, hatless and drenched, shrugs that he can simply buy a new hat. McManus's draftsmanship is elegant: cross-hatched storm skies, expressive silhouettes, and speech balloons that carry vernacular spelling ('wuz,' 'unorella'). Launched in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* ran in hundreds of Hearst syndicate papers simultaneously — those syndicated daily strips and Sunday pages, collected and reprinted cheaply, were the direct commercial and artistic ancestors of the American comic book.