Bringing Up Father — buf370918

Three panels follow the hen-pecked social climber Jiggs and his imperious wife Maggie. Here a daughter praises her father for befriending the Hatesemselfs; Jiggs, in black tie, basks in the compliment; Maggie delivers the punchline — the couple are taking *them* to the opera tonight, turning Jiggs's supposed triumph into domestic servitude. McManus draws in his signature Art Deco–inflected line: elongated figures, patterned gowns, ornate lamps, speech balloons nested inside ruled panels. Launched in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* was among the first strips with a globally syndicated recurring cast, its panel conventions — sequential action, character-specific balloon placement, continuity across dailies — forming the direct template from which comic books, beginning with reprinted newspaper pages in the early 1930s, inherited their visual language.