Bringing Up Father — 1925-09-24

Four panels follow Jiggs, the Irish-immigrant social climber, alone in a country house while his wife Maggie is away. Restless and lonely, he resolves to find the butler and organize a poker game—only to meet a neighbor woman at the door who reports that James the butler has also quit, finding the house too quiet without 'da missus.' McManus draws in his characteristic Art Nouveau–inflected line: heavy black outlines, patterned fabrics rendered with obsessive crosshatching, characters built on broad comic ovals. Launched in 1913 and syndicated internationally, *Bringing Up Father* was among the first daily strips to sustain serialized recurring characters, helping establish the visual conventions—sequential panels, integrated speech balloons, consistent cast—that newspaper comics passed directly into the first comic books of the 1930s.