Bringing Up Father — buf371220

Four daily panels by George McManus show Jiggs caught by Maggie working late every night during opera season. His excuse — "th' work has to be done" — collapses when Maggie rings an employment agency and a secretary arrives clutching letters of recommendation; Jiggs quietly drops his alibi. McManus's sinuous Art Nouveau linework, inherited from his color-supplement training, gives Maggie her signature towering hairdo and feather boa, while Jiggs's shamrock-nosed mug anchors the strip's central joke: the hen-pecked social climber. Launched in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* was among the first daily strips reprinted as stand-alone pamphlets — the direct precursor to the comic book format — and McManus's confident balloon placement and sequential pacing helped codify the visual grammar that defined the medium.