Bringing Up Father — buf390502

George McManus's *Bringing Up Father* follows Jiggs, a newly wealthy Irish-American, and his socially ambitious wife Maggie. In this daily strip, a butler summons Jiggs: his son's baby is on the telephone. The family clusters around the receiver in hushed excitement — has the infant spoken yet? The punchline lands in the final panel: the baby fell asleep, the son reversed the charges, and the call cost thirty dollars. McManus's clean line work, expressive curly-haired women, and tuxedoed butler typify his elegant draftsmanship. Launched in 1913 for King Features, *Bringing Up Father* ran for decades, its recurring characters and sequential panel flow exemplifying the newspaper daily strip format that directly furnished the structural grammar later anthology comic books would repackage and sell.