Bringing Up Father — 1925-08-08

Four panels track a domestic exchange: a young woman asks her father whether her mother's friend Miss Take plans to marry; the father deflects ('That's all she does think about'); a second woman reports the friend will soon be a bride; the punchline hinges on the groom being a 'poor struggling young artist' — whereupon the father deadpans that once she's made up her mind, 'he might as well cease struggling.' McManus's clean brushwork, expressive silhouettes, and elegant Art Nouveau interiors made *Bringing Up Father* — syndicated from 1913 — one of the most widely reprinted daily strips in the world. Strips like this one, accumulated and reprinted in pamphlet form through the 1920s–30s, directly seeded the comic-book format that would codify into its own medium by 1938.