Bringing Up Father — buf370104

Four panels track Maggie reminiscing to Jiggs about their scrappy past: a childhood dog named Flea, Uncle hiding from the gang in a department store's piano department when the lights cut out, Aunt Binny dressing up Jiggs and stuffing him in the cellar on Sundays, and Father losing his trouser buttons to children playing tiddlywinks. McManus's ligne claire draftsmanship—curvaceous figures, patterned wallpaper, crisp balloon lettering—defines the strip's elegant-poverty comedy. Launched in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* was among the first daily strips reprinted as collected pamphlets, directly seeding the comic book format. Its recurring cast and episodic gag structure established conventions every subsequent cartoonist inherited.