Bringing Up Father — buf390315

Four panels track a domestic crisis: a woman scolds her husband Jiggs about her brother sleeping drunk in front of a coal yard on Hickory Street; Jiggs mutters he'll "fix him" and heads out; he returns with the brother slung across a makeshift stretcher of planks, carried by two helpers. The final panel's deflated punchline — "It's the best we could do" — lands via George McManus's signature thick-outlined draftsmanship, ornate Victorian interiors, and expressive silhouette figures. McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* for King Features in 1913, making Jiggs and Maggie among the longest-running recurring characters in comics history. Such syndicated daily strips, reproduced cheaply and collected into giveaway pamphlets through the 1930s, directly seeded the format that became the American comic book.