Bringing Up Father — buf390203

Four panels follow Jiggs, the Irish-American social climber in top hat and checked suit, as he trades barbs with a street acquaintance. The gag turns on Jiggs having said something sharp to his formidable wife Maggie—so remarkable, his companion jokes, that shorthand couldn't capture it on all the paper in the world. The final panel lands the punchline: Jiggs can't remember what he said himself, and offers a thousand dollars to anyone who can tell him. George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913; its clean ink linework, expressive balloon lettering, and weekly domestic conflict made it one of the most widely syndicated strips on earth. Daily newspaper strips like this one supplied the page-format template that early comic book publishers literally reprinted to launch the medium.