Bringing Up Father — 1929-07-10

Four panels follow Maggie's social maneuvering when Lord and Lady De Bate arrive to call. She banishes Jiggs to the doghouse, instructs the maid to say he is out, and preens over the visitors' inevitable envy of 'Dinty Moore's wife.' The final panel delivers the kicker: the callers went upstairs before the maid could intercept them. McManus draws in his characteristic Art Nouveau–inflected line — decorative dress patterns, exaggerated postures, fluid balloon lettering integrated into the panel borders. *Bringing Up Father*, syndicated from 1913, was among the strips whose daily and Sunday pages directly supplied the page format, recurring cast, and sequential grammar that early comic-book publishers simply reprinted. McManus's balloon placement and panel-to-panel continuity were studied craft, not accident.