Bringing Up Father — June 24, 1925

Four panels follow Jiggs — McManus's eternal social climber in his battered top hat — as he spots a stray black cat resembling one he apparently lost. He scoops it up, planning to pass it off to his formidable wife Maggie as the original, retrieved from a neighbor called Casey. Two panels later, neighborhood children corner him: *that's our cat* and *that's the guy that swiped him*. Jiggs escapes, resolving to find yet another cat before Maggie notices. McManus's draftsmanship is precise and fluid, his crosshatching confident, his speech balloons naturalistic. Launched in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* was among the most widely distributed strips in the world, its gag-a-day domestic rhythm helping establish the daily comic strip as a storytelling form that would directly seed the first comic books of the 1930s.