Bringing Up Father — May 27, 1925

Four panels follow Jiggs, the Irish-immigrant bricklayer turned millionaire, as he discovers a mysterious bundle, wrestles with whether to investigate the address on it, and is interrupted by a servant announcing a visitor — who turns out to deliver a diamond-patterned package to Jiggs's door. McManus's line is fluid and architectural, his figures round-shouldered and expressive, his speech balloons shaped to character. *Bringing Up Father* launched in 1913 and ran for decades, syndicated globally by King Features. Daily strips like this one were the direct precursor to the comic book: the recurring cast, sequential panels, and balloon-driven dialogue that artists such as McManus, Outcault, and Dirks codified became the visual grammar every subsequent comic form inherited.