Bringing Up Father — 1925-05-23

Four panels follow Jiggs, the Irish-immigrant social climber, as his wife asks how he disposed of their old cat. He gave it to Mrs. Mahoney the washerwoman, he explains — 'a great relief not to be bothered with a cat.' Mrs. Mahoney then appears at the door bearing a crate: so crazy about the cat, she and her husband 'wouldn't part with it for the world' — so they've brought Jiggs the kittens. McManus draws in his characteristic Art Nouveau-inflected line, with ornate wallpaper and a lamp that recall Mucha; the punchline lands in silence, marked only by a question mark. *Bringing Up Father*, syndicated from 1913, reached tens of millions of readers daily and helped establish the recurring-character strip as a durable commercial form — the direct ancestor of the comic book page.