Bringing Up Father — buf390405

Four panels follow Jiggs, the Irish-immigrant social climber in top hat and tuxedo, through a deadpan exchange with a younger man whose hair stands on end. The gag pivots on wordplay: accused of being "unconscious," Jiggs is told he always *is* unconscious — then deflects into a story about his brother, who supposedly looks just like him. The final panel finds Jiggs alone, fretting he stood his brother up at one o'clock. George McManus launched the strip in 1913 for Hearst's King Features Syndicate; its elegant Art Nouveau linework and obsessive cross-hatching made it one of the most visually refined dailies of the century. McManus's fluid speech balloons and tightly choreographed panel-to-panel staging were foundational grammar for the medium — newspaper strips like this one supplied both the format and the folded-reprint model that became the comic book.