Bringing Up Father — buf371210

Four panels follow Jiggs, the parvenu Irish-American bricklayer-turned-millionaire, as his wife Maggie's singing drives him to distraction. A child wishes for his heart; Jiggs mutters her voice recalls wartime artillery; fleeing the house, he's stopped by a neighbor asking whether he's beating his wife — he isn't, she's singing. The strip closes on the neighbor's silent, baffled question mark. George McManus's clean brushwork, elegant crosshatching, and Art Nouveau interior flourishes set *Bringing Up Father* apart from rougher contemporaries. Launched in 1913, it ran continuously for decades and was among the first newspaper dailies reprinted in collected pamphlet form — a direct ancestor of the comic book format. McManus essentially codified the domestic-comedy strip: recurring cast, compressed visual timing, and speech balloons carrying the entire comic logic.