Bringing Up Father — 1925-05-20

Four panels follow Jiggs, the nouveau-riche Irish-American patriarch, attempting to abandon the family cat near a road sign reading *Seaside — 6 Miles*. Riding in an open motorcar with wife Maggie, he plots aloud; in successive panels he sneaks behind a fence, hurls the cat off, and returns smugly — only to find the animal already waiting by the sign, a question mark floating overhead. McManus's line is clean and assured, his staging economical. *Bringing Up Father* launched in 1913 and ran until 2000, making it one of the longest continuous strips in newspaper history. Its recurring cast, sequential panels, and integrated speech balloons exemplify the visual grammar that newspaper dailies codified before comic books existed as a format.