Bringing Up Father — buf371022

Four panels follow a small girl, Quietina, resisting her aunt Maggie's advances. Maggie cajoles her onto her lap; the child refuses. Maggie offers a large piece of cake in exchange for a kiss. The girl counters: "For a kiss?" — and in the final panel, having heard the terms, announces she doesn't want the cake after all, leaving Maggie holding a large question mark. McManus's line work is elegant and economical: heavily inked women in elaborate hats, a spare domestic interior, speech balloons tightly integrated into the composition. *Bringing Up Father*, launched in 1913, ran for nearly a century, making McManus one of the architects of the recurring-character daily strip — the direct ancestor of the comic book page.