Bringing Up Father — buf390515

Three panels set in a busy railway station unfold a domestic farce: a woman asks whether these arrivals are her mother and father; a checkered-suited man introduces his wife and baby; a stout, formally dressed man spreads his arms welcoming the children home, then mutters he supposes he must kiss the bride. The strip is *Bringing Up Father*, created by George McManus for King Features Syndicate beginning in 1913 and running for decades — one of the longest-lived daily comic strips in American newspaper history. McManus refined the visual shorthand that newspaper strips had been developing since Outcault and Dirks in the 1890s: sequential panels, integrated speech balloons, and recurring cast. Those Sunday pages and dailies were the direct ancestor of the comic book format.