Bringing Up Father — buf360223

Eight Sunday panels follow Jiggs and Maggie Jiggs as Maggie—newly obsessed with the family's aristocratic lineage—hires one Will Tracem, 'Professor of Research in Family Trees, Ancestry, Clans, Races,' to excavate the O'Finnigan heritage. A month later the 'heirlooms' arrive: Timothy's dinner-pail, a wanted poster, a brief case used for beer. George McManus's signature style is everywhere—thick ink outlines, extravagant Art Nouveau interiors, expressive rubber-limbed figures, and speech balloons that carry the entire comic load. Launched in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* ran for nearly nine decades, its Sunday pages among the direct ancestors of the comic book format: the recurring cast, sequential panels, and balloon-driven dialogue that newspaper strips systematized before stapled pamphlets existed.