Bringing Up Father — 1929-07-24

George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, making it one of the longest-running strips in American newspaper history. This four-panel daily follows Jiggs, a working-class Irish immigrant turned nouveau-riche social climber, perpetually caught between his wife Maggie's aspirations and his own appetites. Here, Maggie has put him on an eighteen-day diet; Jiggs slips into a restaurant and orders with spectacular abandon — onion soup, hot biscuits, sirloin smothered in onions, chili, spaghetti, coffee, and dessert pending — while the waiter looks on in disbelief. McManus's elegant Art Nouveau linework, his lace-cloth café settings, and his expressive balloon lettering set a visual standard that fed directly into the early comic-book format, which was largely reprinted newspaper strips.