Bringing Up Father — buf390124

Four horizontal panels follow Jiggs, the Irish-immigrant social climber in top hat and tuxedo, as he endures a familiar domestic trial: Maggie has monopolized the telephone for three hours in a "nutty conversation," leaving him unable to confirm a dinner engagement. The final panel erupts into a crowd scene of chattering women praising young Junior, while an alarmed figure recoils with a shriek. George McManus's linework is fluid and assured — ornate wallpaper, expressive silhouettes, densely lettered balloons packed with overlapping speech. *Bringing Up Father*, syndicated from 1913, was among the first daily strips to build a continuing cast and recurring domestic comedy across decades, its panel-and-balloon grammar helping establish the visual conventions that mid-century comic books would inherit wholesale.