Bringing Up Father — buf390420

Four panels follow two top-hatted, portly gentlemen navigating a city street, their confusion over which corner to meet on spiraling into an argument about shortcuts, taxis, and ultimately whether to stop for a meal. The humor is purely situational: two men too stubborn to admit neither knows where he is going. *Bringing Up Father*, created by George McManus, launched in 1913 and ran for decades as one of the most widely syndicated daily strips in American newspapers. McManus's clean ligne-claire draftsmanship — bold outlines, decorative backgrounds borrowed from Art Nouveau — influenced a generation of cartoonists. The strip's recurring characters and serialized gags were precisely the raw material that 1930s publishers began reprinting as pamphlets, directly seeding the American comic book format.