ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

Bringing Up Father — buf370213

· February 13, 1937 (King Features Syndicate)

Bringing Up Father — buf370213
Four panels of George McManus's long-running domestic strip follow a character reminiscing about hardscrabble winters — burst pipes, cold mornings, a brother hauling firewood — while a second figure in bed demands another sock. The middle panels shift to a women's glee club and a barber-shop quartet trading boasts about singing, and the strip closes on a figure insisting the family listen to a story about General Grant. McManus's line is fluid and decorative, his characters round and expressive, speech balloons woven naturally into crowded domestic interiors. Launched in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* ran for decades and exemplifies the syndicated daily strip format — the recurring cast, compressed four-panel rhythm, and visual shorthand — that directly seeded the anthology comic books of the late 1930s.

Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain