Bringing Up Father — buf371018

Four panels follow Jiggs, the parvenu Irishman, as his wife Maggie orders him inside to charm a small girl visitor. He mutters he might "as well go in an' git it over," then greets the child stiffly. She announces she doesn't like him because he doesn't bring pretzels the way her father does; final panel closes on a baffled question mark. George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, drawing on his fluid Art Nouveau line and precise crosshatching to sustain one of the longest-running gag strips in syndication history. McManus's consistent use of pantomime beats, split-second reaction panels, and the recurring Jiggs-Maggie domestic dynamic helped codify the daily newspaper strip's rhythmic four-panel structure — the direct ancestor of the comic-book page format.