Bringing Up Father — August 27, 1925

Four panels follow the rotund, top-hatted Jiggs encountering his neighbor Jerry Mickey hobbling on crutches. The joke unspools in classic daily-strip logic: Jerry explains a car crash with Dinty Moore, his doctor son declares him legitimately lame, and a second son holds an accident policy — making the injury financially convenient. McManus draws with confident Art Nouveau curves, brick walls suggested in crosshatch, and expressive balloon lettering that carries the Irish-American vernacular. *Bringing Up Father*, launched in 1913, ran for over eight decades and helped establish the recurring-character daily strip as a commercial and artistic institution. Its consistent cast, compressed four-panel pacing, and social comedy of immigrant upward mobility made it a template that shaped everything that followed — including the comic books assembled from newspaper reprints in the 1930s.