From the exhibition
Bringing Up Father — buf370528
· May 28, 1937 (King Features Syndicate)

George McManus's long-running daily strip follows Jiggs, the Irish-American social climber, as he encounters an old acquaintance named McSwatt on the street. Across four horizontal panels, the two men exchange pleasantries — McSwatt is greeted as an "old fighting man" — then Jiggs asks whether McSwatt is still the lightweight champion and whether he married "that big, fat girl." The punchline lands in the final panel: she is now the new champion. McManus's pen line is elegant and confident, his figures rendered with rounded solidity and expressive body language. Launched in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* was among the first strips to establish the recurring-character daily format that syndicates would industrialize into the comic book medium itself.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain