From the exhibition
Bringing Up Father — buf370930
· September 30, 1937 (daily strip, King Features Syndicate)

Four panels trace a classic Jiggs-and-Maggie reversal: Jiggs, certain his bandaged gouty foot has healed, yanks the dressing off — 'Ah — not a bit of pain!' — only to be overheard by a neighbor telling Maggie he's been troubled with gout, landing him back in his chair, foot re-wrapped, as Maggie delivers the withering exit line, 'Back on again you go.' McManus draws in his characteristic art-nouveau-inflected line: sleek crosshatching, rounded figures, crisp balloon lettering. Launched in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* was among the earliest strips syndicated internationally, its recurring cast and sequential panel grammar directly shaping the anthology reprint pamphlets of the late 1930s that became the first true comic books.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain