Bringing Up Father — 1925-05-16

Four panels show Jiggs, the rough-edged Irish-American social climber, announcing at his dining table that he is abandoning his doctor-ordered milk diet for steak, baked potatoes, salad, pie, coffee, and cheese. A doctor then arrives on a house call; Jiggs nervously feigns wellness. The doctor, satisfied, prescribes more of the same diet — not knowing Jiggs has already been cheating on it. Caught, Jiggs is sent walking to Dinty Moore's tavern. McManus's clean brushwork, hatched plaids, and oval speech balloons are characteristic of the strip he launched in 1913, which ran for decades in Hearst syndication. Such daily and Sunday newspaper strips supplied the reprinted page format that became the first comic books of the 1930s, making McManus's recurring characters and panel grammar foundational to the medium's entire commercial form.