Bringing Up Father — buf371217

George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, making it one of the longest-running American comic strips. This four-panel daily follows the eternal domestic war between nouveau-riche Maggie and her hapless husband Jiggs. Here, neighbors complain that Mother has been straining her voice singing; the doctor has warned her to stop; Jiggs muses he could have told her the same years ago — and in the final panel Maggie's thrown crockery sends him spinning among stars. McManus's draftsmanship is elegant: sinuous art-nouveau linework, economical cross-hatching, and expressive silhouettes. The strip's recurring gag structure and speech-balloon rhythm directly shaped the visual grammar that early comic-book editors codified when they began reprinting newspaper dailies as pamphlets in the 1930s.