Bringing Up Father — buf371113

Four panels by George McManus show two spotted-pajama burglars methodically robbing a household while a fainting woman alerts her husband offscreen. The thieves collect silverware, demand compliance at gunpoint, and exit with their haul — only for the final panel to break the fourth wall entirely: one burglar faces a television set broadcasting a cliffhanger card reading "This great thrilling robber serial will continue at this same time next week." McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913 for King Features Syndicate, running it until his death in 1954. His round, ink-heavy figures and fluid balloon placement influenced a generation of cartoonists. Daily newspaper strips like this one — syndicated to hundreds of papers simultaneously — supplied both the audience and the page-layout conventions that early comic-book publishers directly repackaged beginning in 1933.