From the exhibition
Bringing Up Father — buf390523
· c. 1939 (copyright date visible in strip)

Four panels follow Jiggs, the lace-curtain Irish social climber in top hat and checked suit, as he sneaks past his sleeping son, mutters about a missed office appointment, then bolts for work — only to be startled by the boy's thunderous WOW! George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, and it ran for decades as one of the most widely syndicated strips in the world. McManus's draftsmanship is immediately legible here: decorative Art Nouveau wallpaper patterns, confident brush line, and speech balloons whose colloquial spelling ('fer th'', 'git') carry the whole comic rhythm. Daily newspaper strips like this one supplied the page layouts, recurring cast, and visual shorthand that early comic book editors would simply repackage and reprint throughout the 1930s and 40s.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain