Bringing Up Father — buf390130

Four panels follow a domestic telephone comedy: a stout, elaborately dressed woman reports a busy signal; her husband—top-hatted, waistcoated—wonders aloud whether the line is ever free; a second attempt still finds it engaged; the punchline lands when he concludes that while someone could talk to the whole world for that long, who on earth would want to listen? George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* for King Features in 1913, running it until his death in 1954. Its recurring characters Maggie and Jiggs—nouveau-riche wife and reluctant social climber husband—made it one of the most widely syndicated strips globally. McManus's clean Art Nouveau linework and disciplined panel rhythm were foundational to the visual grammar that daily newspaper strips exported directly into the first comic books of the late 1930s.