Bringing Up Father — buf370513

Four panels by George McManus follow Jiggs, the comic strip's perpetually hen-pecked Irish-American everyman, as he recounts being trampled in the crowd at a coronation procession — only to be immediately invited to Royal Ascot, where another enormous crowd awaits. His horrified question mark hangs in the air before a boot sends him flying in the final panel, stars and piano keys scattering. McManus's line is fluid and elegant, his characters rubbery yet precisely drafted. *Bringing Up Father*, syndicated from 1913, was among the first strips to anchor recurring working-class characters in genuine serialized comedy. Its daily and Sunday pages, reaching millions simultaneously, established the visual grammar — panel grids, speech balloons, sight gags — that directly shaped the anthology comic books of the late 1930s.