Bringing Up Father — buf370810

Four daily panels by George McManus follow Maggie and Jiggs's domestic friction. Here Maggie spots Count Fornaught, a society acquaintance, approaching the house; she instructs Jiggs to go to the grocery store so the count won't stay for dinner. Jiggs suspects something, investigates, and discovers the butler has simply let the count in—anticlimactic relief played deadpan. McManus's ligne-claire draftsmanship—arched eyebrows, elegantly furnished interiors, crisp speech balloons—refined the visual grammar Outcault and Dirks had pioneered. *Bringing Up Father* was among the first strips syndicated internationally, helping fix the daily-strip format—sequential panels, recurring cast, cliffhanger rhythm—as the structural template newspaper publishers later reprinted into proto-comic books during the 1930s.