Bringing Up Father — buf390422

Four horizontal panels follow Jiggs, the Irish-American social climber in top hat and tails, as he tries to gain an audience with a certain Mr. Attel. A secretary twice turns him away — the man is too busy, must not be disturbed — so Jiggs peers through the office window instead. Returning, he reports the window was closed, leaving his companion baffled. The gag is pure vaudeville timing rendered in ink: expressive faces, spare backgrounds, and speech balloons doing all the work. George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913 for King Features Syndicate, and its daily-strip format — sequential panels, recurring cast, cliffhanger rhythm — fed directly into the anthology reprints that became the first American comic books in the 1930s.