From the exhibition
Bringing Up Father — buf370412
· April 13, 1937 (dated 4·13; copyright line reads 1937, King Features Syndicate)
Three panels follow Jiggs, McManus's Irish-immigrant social climber, along a waterfront. In panel one he marvels at the crowds heading to a coronation. Panel two: he finds a neighbor fitting out a battered motorboat for the same journey — 'it's me wife's idea.' Panel three: the boat sinks immediately, and Jiggs advises the man to 'give me regards to th' mermaids.' McManus's draftsmanship is unusually refined for a daily strip — rounded Art Deco figures, confident cross-hatching, theatrical staging. *Bringing Up Father* launched in 1913 and ran continuously for decades, its speech-balloon gags and recurring cast directly shaping the visual conventions that newspaper syndicates exported into the first collected comic books of the 1930s.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain
