Bringing Up Father — buf390215

Four daily panels follow Jiggs, the eternally diet-tortured social climber of George McManus's long-running strip. In the first, Jiggs sits alone tormented by food fantasies; a tall, elegant figure then asks to borrow his telephone. Jiggs waves him off—only to overhear the man describe a lavish steak dinner with onion soup, baked potatoes, thick gravy, and noodles in excruciating detail. The final panel shows Jiggs blasted off his chair, rendered airborne by sheer culinary anguish. McManus's line work is fluid and ornate, his figures rubbery and expressive. *Bringing Up Father*, syndicated from 1913, was among the strips whose collected reprints directly seeded the comic-book format, proving that recurring characters with consistent visual personalities could sustain a mass readership across decades.