Bringing Up Father — 1925-05-14

Four panels follow Jiggs, the newly-rich Irish-American laborer, as he plots to sneak off his doctor-ordered milk diet, borrow money from his domineering wife Maggie, and eat real food at Dinty Moore's. She refuses him a single cent; the strip closes with Jiggs telling their daughter he is 'still on my milk diet.' McManus draws in a clean, rounded line with decorative black-and-white patterning on clothes and furnishings — elegant craft for a daily newspaper strip. Launched in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* ran for nearly ninety years and was syndicated worldwide. These newspaper dailies, with their recurring cast, sequential panels, and speech balloons, formed the direct template from which the comic book — as a collected, then original, format — emerged in the 1930s.