Bringing Up Father

George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, and by 1930 it ran in hundreds of papers worldwide. This four-panel daily follows the strip's central engine: nouveau-riche Jiggs hiding from his sharp-tongued wife Maggie. Here Jiggs sits comfortably speculating whether Maggie is finally 'tamed'; she then 'clumsily' smashes dishes—a calculated act—sending him scrambling behind a chair while she advances in fury. The fourth panel shows a terrified Jiggs plotting to phone the police. McManus's draftsmanship is elegant: fluid Art Nouveau linework, precise crosshatching on upholstered furniture, and speech balloons whose casual vernacular ('By golly,' 'gittin'') carry the whole gag. Newspaper dailies like this one—syndicated, sequential, character-driven—directly furnished the reprint anthologies of the 1930s that became the first American comic books.