Bringing Up Father — 1925-05-13

Four panels follow Jiggs, the nouveau-riche Irish immigrant, as his wife Maggie orders him onto a milk diet; he slips out with his pal Dinty Moore, promising a 'swell ball'—which turns out to be the Milk Men's and Track Walkers' Ball at Casey Hall, the final panel's poster delivering the punchline. McManus's pen line is clean and assured: crosshatched suits, expressive rubber-limbed figures, speech balloons integrated naturally into the composition. *Bringing Up Father* launched in 1913 and ran in syndication for decades, making it one of the longest-lived strips in American newspapers. Those syndicated daily strips and Sunday pages are the direct ancestors of the comic book—the panel grid, recurring cast, and balloon-driven dialogue all codified here before any stapled pamphlet existed.