Bringing Up Father — buf390112

Four panels follow Jiggs, the social-climbing Irish-American bricklayer turned millionaire, as he wakes from a nap muttering that dreaming of work was bad enough to make him glad to rise, then rushes through the street promising himself he is late for Mr. Haway's office — only to arrive and find a massive, impassive figure in an armchair who greets him with a question mark, then delivers the dry punchline: "Well — it's better late than never." George McManus's line work is clean and assured, his figures round and rubbery, his settings domestic and urban by turns. Launched in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* was among the longest-running and most widely syndicated daily strips in American newspaper history, its recurring cast and panel-to-panel continuity helping fix the conventions that daily comic strips — the direct ancestors of the comic book — handed to the medium wholesale.