Bringing Up Father — buf370723

George McManus's *Bringing Up Father* — running from 1913 into the 1950s — follows the eternal collision between nouveau-riche social aspiration and domestic chaos. This daily strip plays a tight four-panel gag: Jiggs, the choleric master of the house, sends his butler on an errand an hour ago; the butler returns having forgotten what he was sent for, and Jiggs's retaliatory swat lands in the final panel with a crisp 'Ou—'. McManus's draftsmanship is among the most elegant in newspaper comics — sinuous Art Nouveau line work, immaculate brushwork on interiors, and expressive silhouette figures. Daily newspaper strips like this one established the visual grammar — sequential panels, speech balloons, recurring cast — that comic books would directly inherit when publishers began reprinting and then originating strip-format material in the 1930s.