Bringing Up Father — buf370819

Four panels follow Jiggs, the perpetually henpecked Irish-American social climber, as his wife Maggie interrupts his attempt to sneak a phone call — presumably to his working-class pals at Dinty Moore's. When she catches him mid-conversation, her threat to fire the unnamed caller escalates into full domestic fury; Jiggs capitulates instantly. George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, and it ran for nearly ninety years, making it one of the longest continuous strips in syndication history. McManus's art is unmistakable: Art Nouveau-inflected architecture, elegantly curved linework, and expressive silhouette gags. Strips like this one were the direct seedbed of the comic book — their panel grids, speech balloons, and recurring cast establishing the visual language that anthology reprint comics formalized by decade's end.