Bringing Up Father — 1925-08-05

Four daily panels follow Jiggs, the eternally henpecked Irish-American social climber, hunched over papers at his desk while wife Maggie looms behind him. A daughter inquires whether Mother saw Father; Maggie confesses she couldn't interrupt him—he looked *so* ambitious. The final panel pivots: Jiggs is actually phoning Dinty Moore with horse-racing tips, ambition being pure cover. McManus's draftsmanship is elegant—fluid Art Nouveau line, fashionably elongated figures, layered cross-hatching for depth. Launched in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* ran in syndication for decades, its recurring cast and sequential panel logic forming part of the template that newspaper comics handed directly to the first comic books of the late 1930s.