From the exhibition
Bringing Up Father — buf370602
· Daily strip, c. June 2, 1937 (King Features Syndicate)

Four panels follow Jiggs, the Irish-immigrant-made-good, as his wife Maggie reports he went to the office early to tidy his room; he is found there, sleepless, having redecorated the walls with pinup portraits. On the phone he sweet-talks a woman, signing off with "Atta-baby." George McManus's draftsmanship is immediately recognizable: clean brushwork, elegantly dressed figures, and lush Art Nouveau flourishes framing the backgrounds. Launched in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* was among the longest-running and most widely syndicated dailies in American newspaper history, appearing in dozens of countries. McManus refined the visual grammar—rigid panel grids, integrated speech balloons, consistent character design across decades—that early comic-book publishers would directly inherit when they began reprinting newspaper strips as standalone pamphlets in the 1930s.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain