Bringing Up Father — 1925-11-05

Four panels track Jiggs and Maggie's ongoing domestic war. Jiggs pleads for pocket money; Maggie refuses, citing the new safe she bought—protection against thieves *and* her husband. A burglar appears on the stairs, triggering a standoff: the intruder demands hands up, then, learning Jiggs can crack a safe, proposes a professional partnership. Jiggs obliges with cheerful opportunism. McManus's draftsmanship is elegant—Art Nouveau flourishes on Maggie's dress, precise cross-hatching on the safe, expressive silhouettes. Launched in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* ran in hundreds of Hearst syndicate papers, demonstrating how recurring characters, sequential panels, and integrated speech balloons could sustain a comedic universe across decades—precisely the daily newspaper page infrastructure from which the comic book format would directly emerge.