Bringing Up Father — May 1, 1925

Four panels track Jiggs's comic defeat by the weather. In panel one he peers out at rain, vowing nothing will keep him indoors. Panel two shows him startled by a caged bird's song — a question mark floating above his head. Panel three reveals the bird trilling 'Tweet-tweet,' and panel four delivers the punchline: Jiggs stands drenched in a downpour, rationalizing 'A little rain won't hurt me.' McManus's draftsmanship is fluid and decorative, his interiors dense with Art Nouveau ornament. Launched in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* was among the first daily strips syndicated coast to coast, embedding speech balloons, sequential panels, and recurring characters into American print culture — the direct structural ancestor of the comic book format.