Bringing Up Father — 1925-05-25

Four panels follow Jiggs, the round Irish-American social climber, as a well-dressed acquaintance asks him to watch a cat before heading west. The visitor chats so long he misses his train—and exits without the cat, leaving Jiggs holding the animal and the punchline. McManus draws with clean Art Nouveau-inflected linework: elegantly curved figures, patterned suits, and speech balloons that carry the full comedic weight. Launched in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* was syndicated to hundreds of papers worldwide, making Jiggs and his socially ambitious wife Maggie among the first globally recognized comic characters. Daily strips like this one—not yet collected into books—were the incubator for the visual grammar comics still use: sequential panels, recurring casts, and jokes resolved in the final beat.