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From the exhibition

Bringing Up Father — July 19, 1929

· Daily strip, July 19, 1929

Bringing Up Father — July 19, 1929
George McManus's *Bringing Up Father* ran from 1913 to 2000, making it one of the longest-lived strips in American newspaper history. This four-panel daily follows the eternal McManus formula: Jiggs, the Irish immigrant made good, schemes to sneak out to Dinty Moore's tavern while his socially ambitious wife Maggie keeps him home. Here a neighbor lectures on marital duty while Jiggs feigns sympathy; the final panels show a dark, shadowy reunion tableau — Maggie catching Jiggs — rendered in McManus's characteristic ink-heavy silhouette. His art refined the visual grammar pioneered by the 1890s Sunday pages: sequential panels, integrated speech balloons, and a recurring cast whose personalities required no introduction. Those Sunday pages are the direct ancestor of the comic book format itself.

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