Bringing Up Father — buf370428

Four black-and-white daily panels follow a wife and daughter aboard an ocean liner, frantic that Father is losing money to professional card sharks in the smoking room. The wife storms in, announces she is "through," and the gamblers — their chips stacked high — smirk as she effectively ends the game. McManus's draftsmanship is fluid Art Deco: women in polka dots and wide-brimmed hats, speech balloons nested in confident brushwork, panel borders that meter comic timing like a vaudeville beat. Launched in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* ran for over eighty years, making Irish-immigrant social climber Jiggs one of newspaper comics' most recognized recurring characters. Strips like this one, reprinted and collected in pamphlet form through the 1920s–30s, directly seeded the format that became the American comic book.