Bringing Up Father — 1925-07-08

Four panels follow Jiggs, the ball-and-chain-wearing husband, as his wife leaves him chained up while she goes shopping. Rather than stay put, he shuffles off to keep a promise to his friend Dinty, hoping Dugan's blacksmith shop is open to free him from his literal restraint. The final panel shows a smithy hammering at the chain. McManus draws in a confident, rounded line with crosshatched brickwork and expressive figures — the visual shorthand of newspaper dailies fully matured. *Bringing Up Father* debuted in 1913 and ran for nearly a century, making it one of the longest-lived comic strips in American newspaper history. Strips like this one were the direct ancestors of the comic book: syndicated dailies trained readers in panel-to-panel storytelling, speech balloons, and recurring character comedy that collected reprint editions would soon package between covers.