Bringing Up Father — 1925-07-09

Four panels follow Jiggs, McManus's eternally henpecked Irish-American social climber, as he laments that Dinty Moore's restaurant is closed, then encounters a neighbor who offers him corned beef and cabbage from a bucket — only for a third party to appear and note a black eye Jiggs received from one Larry. McManus's line work is assured and economical: rounded figures in checked suits, top hats cocked at comic angles, brick walls and iron fences anchoring street space. *Bringing Up Father* launched in 1913 and ran for decades, syndicated globally. Its daily strip format — recurring characters, cliffhanger gags, consistent visual shorthand — helped establish the conventions that newspaper comic pages exported directly into the first comic books of the 1930s.