Bringing Up Father — 15 October 1925

George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, and by 1925 it ran in hundreds of papers worldwide — one of the most widely syndicated dailies ever printed. This four-panel strip follows Jiggs, the newly rich Irish-American bricklayer, and his socially ambitious wife Maggie as they move to a new neighborhood. The first two panels show Maggie fretting over moving men who haven't arrived; the last two panels erupt when old working-class friends pull up in an Irving Moving Co. truck and greet Jiggs warmly — exactly the company Maggie is desperate to escape. McManus's draftsmanship is distinctive: Art Nouveau curlicues on furniture, elegantly dressed women, and broad physical types. His fluid speech balloons and tight panel-to-panel cause-and-effect pacing helped establish the visual grammar that daily newspaper strips — the direct ancestors of the comic book — codified for every cartoonist who followed.