Bringing Up Father — buf370226

Four panels follow a domestic crisis: a daughter urges her father to stop her mother's constant crying; he announces he sent her to a matinee. Checking the clock at five o'clock, he waits anxiously by the door — then greets his wife, who erupts in theatrical sobs because the play's hero was killed in the last act and the heroine wept. George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, syndicated by King Features to hundreds of papers worldwide. Its recurring characters Jiggs and Maggie, crisp Art Nouveau linework, and rhythmic four-panel timing made it one of the earliest strips to demonstrate that daily newspaper comics could sustain a continuous cast — the foundational model from which comic books directly descended.