Bringing Up Father — buf370126

Four daily panels by George McManus follow Jiggs and Maggie through a cascade of family embarrassments: a horse-shoe-pitching uncle who hospitalized her father, a cousin whose dentist visit turned his face red, and a chaotic elevator ride in a big department store. McManus draws in his characteristic Art Nouveau–inflected line — round, expressive faces, checkered trousers, bowler hats — with speech balloons stacked inside panels that barely contain the run-on storytelling. *Bringing Up Father*, syndicated from 1913, was among the strips that exported American visual narrative grammar — the gutter, the recurring cast, timed punchlines — into print formats that directly seeded the first comic books of the late 1930s.