Bringing Up Father — buf370407

George McManus's *Bringing Up Father* (King Features Syndicate, launched 1913) follows Irish-immigrant-made-good Jiggs and his socially ambitious wife Maggie. In this April 7, 1937 daily strip, Maggie forbids Jiggs's pipe-smoking because Sir Suright is coming to coach them on coronation etiquette — a topical hook on George VI's impending May 1937 coronation. A well-dressed Englishman then presents Jiggs with a replacement pipe so voluminous that Jiggs mutters he thought it was a forest fire; Maggie, engulfed in smoke in the final panel, wonders aloud whether she'll survive London. McManus's sinuous Art Nouveau linework, cross-hatched waistcoats, and precise speech-balloon placement exemplify the draftsmanship that made newspaper comic strips — dailies and Sunday pages exactly like this one — the direct formal ancestor of the comic book.