Bringing Up Father — August 13, 1925

Four panels follow Jiggs, McManus's perpetually hen-pecked Irish-American social climber, as he attempts to practice flute in his parlor. In the first panel he predicts his upstairs neighbor will cancel his lease; the second shows him playing badly, notes flying; a servant announces the neighbor has come downstairs — and in the punchline panel the neighbor begs Jiggs to play *Home Sweet Home* again because he loves it. McManus's rounded, art-nouveau line and spotted-pattern upholstery are instantly recognizable. Launched in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* ran in syndication for decades, its recurring cast and sequential panels helping standardize the visual conventions — speech balloons, comic timing across frames, expressive gesture — that daily newspaper strips handed directly to the first comic books of the 1930s.