Bringing Up Father — buf370706

Four panels follow Jiggs and his daughter as they fret over Maggie's grief for the lost dog Fifi. Jiggs reassures the daughter he's spoken with Maggie and found her in good spirits—only to discover her dramatically singing a mournful ballad: *"My heart told me to tell the parson to toll the bell."* The final panel delivers the punchline as Jiggs, upstaged by a dog's funeral lament, mutters he wishes *he* were lost. George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913 for King Features Syndicate, running it until his death in 1954. McManus's fluid Art Nouveau linework and his use of expressive speech balloons anchored within stable rectangular panels helped standardize the visual grammar that daily newspaper strips passed directly into the first comic books of the late 1930s.