Bringing Up Father — buf370812

Four panels track a domestic standoff: a stout, well-dressed man bellows *James—oh—James—* at his deaf butler, then mutters that the man is dumb but couldn't hear him. The butler materializes, cheerfully oblivious, asking how many times he must be called before the employer recognizes his own name. Final panel: employer says he'd ring next time; butler answers *Ow!* — implying a pinch or prod already delivered. George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, running it for over three decades. His clean, art-nouveau-inflected line, expressive silhouettes, and tight comedic timing in sequential panels exemplify the daily newspaper strip form that directly seeded the comic book: same recurring characters, same panel grammar, same balloon-driven dialogue that Will Eisner and others would inherit and formalize.