Bringing Up Father — buf370111

Four panels of McManus's long-running *Bringing Up Father* track a rapid-fire exchange of neighborhood gossip: a harmonica-playing nephew shot by an exasperated bystander; the elaborately overdressed Carrie, whose floral gown makes her resemble two Floradora Girls at once; 'Moon-Face' Magee standing too close to a gas-jet at a dance, his hair catching fire; and 'Gas-Bag' Finnegan fleeing town on news that his wife has arrived. McManus's line is elegant and clean — ornate Art Nouveau curlicues on costumes, expressive rubber-limbed figures. Launched in 1913, the strip ran until 1954, its recurring cast of Irish-American social climbers helping establish the daily comic strip as America's first mass sequential-art form, the direct ancestor of the comic book.