Bringing Up Father — July 7, 1925

Four panels follow Jiggs as a street acquaintance advises him to invite Maggie on a mountain vacation—reverse psychology, since a stubborn wife will refuse and leave him free. Jiggs tries it; Maggie immediately embraces the idea, packs at once, and Jiggs exits the final panel to say goodbye to his pal Dugan, defeated. McManus draws his characters in bold black-and-white line with elegant cross-hatching, Maggie's fashionable dress contrasting Jiggs's checked suit. Launched in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* ran in syndication for decades, reaching millions of daily readers. These newspaper strips—daily and Sunday—were the direct ancestors of comic books: they established recurring casts, sequential panel grammar, and the integrated speech balloon that comics still use today.