Bringing Up Father — buf370902

Four panels, black ink, no color: Jiggs sets up a movie camera to film himself, primps for his close-up, and is interrupted mid-vanity by Maggie calling his name — then striking him with her rolling pin. The final panel shows him crumpled on the floor as she delivers the punchline: the picture will be "full of action an' close-ups." George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, making it one of the longest-running strips in American newspaper history. McManus's clean linework, spotted blacks, and precise staging influenced generations of cartoonists; his recurring domestic duo of social-climbing Maggie and hapless Jiggs helped establish the recurring-character comedy strip as a commercial and artistic form central to the eventual birth of the comic book.