Bringing Up Father — buf390209

Four panels follow Jiggs, the parvenu Irish-American laborer turned millionaire, through a single comic humiliation. His wife Maggie lectures him at breakfast about caloric content while he stares at a suspiciously dirty dish; outdoors he encounters a rotund acquaintance so enormous that ropes hold his girth together, who confesses the bundle he hauls daily is simply his lunch — capped by a thought-balloon question mark from Jiggs. George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913 for King Features Syndicate, running it until his death in 1954. McManus's draftsmanship — fluid Art Nouveau linework, tuxedoed figures, elegant interior backgrounds — influenced a generation of cartoonists. The daily newspaper strip format pioneered here, sequential panels with speech balloons and recurring cast, provided the direct structural template from which the American comic book industry emerged in the 1930s.