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From the exhibition

Bringing Up Father — 6 November 1925

· Daily strip, 6 November 1925

Bringing Up Father — 6 November 1925
George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, and by 1925 it ran in hundreds of papers worldwide, making Jiggs and Maggie among the most recognized fictional couples on earth. This four-panel daily shows Maggie waking Jiggs in their ornate bedroom, insisting she has heard an intruder downstairs. Jiggs investigates the staircase and calls down; a voice answers "Nobody!" — the oldest gag in the book, delivered with perfect comic timing. McManus's draftsmanship is distinctive: crosshatched shadows, elaborately canopied beds, and fluid figure work indebted to Art Nouveau. His speech balloons are cleanly lettered and compositionally integrated, exemplifying the visual grammar that newspaper daily strips codified before comic books existed as a format.

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