ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

Bringing Up Father — buf390303

· c. 1939 (King Features Syndicate daily)

Bringing Up Father — buf390303
George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, and by the late 1930s it was among the most widely syndicated daily strips on earth. This four-panel gag follows Jiggs and Maggie: Jiggs has slipped off to visit a hospitalized friend early one morning, earning Maggie's brief approval — until a phone call to the sickroom reveals the patient snoring loudly, giving himself away. McManus's draftsmanship is immediately recognizable: elegantly curved brushwork, Art Nouveau–inflected interiors, and characters rendered with fluid economy. The strip exemplifies the daily-comic format that newspaper syndicates exported globally, establishing the conventions — recurring cast, single punchline, speech balloons as narrative engine — that early comic-book publishers would directly inherit and repackage into the new medium of the 1930s.

Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain