Bringing Up Father — 1925-09-30

Four panels follow Jiggs — squat, top-hatted, cigar in hand — as he walks to pal Casey's house hoping for company. A large woman answers the gate: *Who are you and what do you want?* Jiggs explains; she reports Casey just phoned saying he was *with you*. A question mark floats above Jiggs's head before he brightens: *Now I've got me old pal Casey in Dad.* McManus's linework is confident and economical — bold outlines, crosshatched checks on the woman's dress, expressive silhouettes doing the comedy's heavy lifting. Launched in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* was among the first strips to develop a locked cast and serialized domestic conflict, its daily and Sunday pages helping establish the visual conventions — guttered panels, integrated speech balloons, timed beats — that American comic books would inherit wholesale two decades later.