From the exhibition
Bringing Up Father — buf360202
· c. 1936 (King Features Syndicate)

George McManus's *Bringing Up Father* follows the eternal domestic war between Jiggs — a newly rich Irish-American laborer who longs for corned beef and his old saloon pals — and his social-climbing wife Maggie. These two Sunday pages show the strip's double rhythm: a top-tier gag strip (here involving a telephone-monopolizing boss and a woman stranded in a canoe) and the main full-page narrative, where Maggie schemes with a European count while Jiggs cheerfully packs the house with rowdy old friends singing "Little Annie Rooney." McManus's art is elegant and precise — Art Nouveau furniture, swirling dresses, confident brushwork on crowd scenes. Launched in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* helped fix the conventions — recurring cast, weekly continuity, expressive balloon lettering — that Sunday newspaper pages carried directly into the first comic books of the 1930s.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain