ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

Bringing Up Father — October 24, 1925

· George McManus, 1925. Ink on paper, newspaper reproduction.

Bringing Up Father — October 24, 1925
Four panels follow Jiggs, McManus's Irish-immigrant social climber, as he dons a wig, strolls into a restaurant confident the baldness-concealing hairpiece will make him irresistible, then endures his wife Maggie's flat verdict — *'It's all a lot of bunk'* — after she reports women were flirting not with him but with his dancing partner. McManus's draftsmanship is ornate for a daily strip: hatched plaid suits, decorative mirrors, expressive silhouettes. Launched in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* ran for nearly nine decades and was syndicated worldwide. Its recurring cast and sequential panels helped standardize the visual grammar — balloon placement, reaction beats, punchline final panel — that daily newspaper strips handed directly to the first comic book anthologies of the 1930s.

Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain