Bringing Up Father — buf370419

Four daily panels by George McManus show Jiggs and Maggie aboard an ocean liner. Maggie pushes Jiggs to court the ship's social elite; he deflects by chatting up the captain about canal-boat life. The gag turns on the captain's deflated dignity — once proud of his rank, now humbled by comparison. McManus's line work is assured: rounded figures, crisp nautical dress, expressive faces without caricature excess. *Bringing Up Father* launched in 1913, making it one of the longest-running American strips. McManus refined the daily four-panel format that syndicates exported worldwide, and his speech-balloon placement — text anchored above figures, tails clean and unambiguous — became a classroom model for the visual grammar that comic books inherited directly from the newspaper page.