Bringing Up Father — July 18, 1925

Four panels follow Jiggs — the Irish-immigrant social climber who anchors McManus's long-running domestic comedy — as he suffers a heat wave. Lying in a porch hammock, he complains he could fry an egg on his neck; gets up resolving to find somewhere cool; wanders off clutching what appears to be a pillow; and lands, hammock slung between trees, reading contentedly beside a pond: "What could be sweeter?" McManus's line work is clean and economical, his figures rubbery and expressive. *Bringing Up Father* launched in 1913 and ran until 2000, making it one of the longest continuous strips in history. Distributed by International Feature Service, these daily four-panel strips — not the Sunday pages — were the direct commercial model that 1930s editors bundled into the first comic books.