Bringing Up Father — buf390421

Four daily panels follow Jiggs and a companion trading barbs at a cluttered table before Jiggs fields a telephone call. The caller announces that a certain Sir Von Platter — apparently just fished from a lake — claims Jiggs as a friend; the final panel catches Jiggs sputtering at the accusation. George McManus created *Bringing Up Father* in 1913 for the Hearst syndicate, running it until his death in 1954. McManus's clean, Art Nouveau–inflected line, his arched eyebrows and exaggerated takes, his disciplined four-panel rhythm with integrated speech balloons — all became textbook newspaper-strip craft. Syndicates like Hearst's King Features were the true incubators of the comic book: their daily and Sunday pages established panels, sequential pacing, and recurring characters as the foundational grammar of the medium.