Bringing Up Father

George McManus's *Bringing Up Father* — syndicated from 1913 and eventually reaching 500 million readers across 46 countries — distilled its domestic comedy into pure pantomime here. Four panels show only legs and feet: a man in large, flat shoes descends front steps, and in the final panel a woman's slender heeled shoes kick him smartly off. No dialogue, no faces — the gag lives entirely in posture and footwear. McManus's draftsmanship, influenced by *Art Nouveau* and Viennese illustration, gave the strip an elegance unusual in newspaper comics. The strip itself belongs to the generation — Outcault, Dirks, McManus — whose recurring characters, sequential panels, and visual shorthand for motion and emotion invented the grammar that comic books would later inherit wholesale.