Bringing Up Father — 1925-09-22

Four panels follow Jiggs, the nouveau-riche Irish-American bricklayer, pining for his pals while his wife Maggie is away. He phones the leak-and-suck plumbing company, summoning a large, battered-nosed plumber to the house—then confesses he just wanted someone to talk to. The plumber retorts he'll charge by the hour; Jiggs shrugs that he'll win enough at cards to cover it. McManus's line work is elegant and assured: crosshatched waistcoats, rounded figures, and speech balloons that carry comic timing panel to panel. *Bringing Up Father*, syndicated from 1913 and eventually appearing in 46 countries, was among the strips that established the recurring cast, sequential panel grammar, and working-class comedic voice that daily newspaper comics handed directly to the first comic books of the 1930s.