Bringing Up Father — buf390525

Four panels follow Jiggs, the henpecked Irish-American social climber created by George McManus, as he hunts for a baby name. Excited by "Oswald," he plans to tell wife Maggie — only to walk past a sign reading *Oswald and Oswald, Garbage Collectors*, deflating the idea instantly. A small girl and a dog deliver the punchline. McManus's draftsmanship is unmistakable: Art Nouveau-influenced curling lines, checkerboard waistcoat, stovepipe hat, and expressive silhouette work. Launched in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* ran in hundreds of Hearst syndicate papers worldwide. Its daily strips and Sunday pages represent the commercial and formal infrastructure from which the comic book directly grew — reprinted strip collections were among the first staple-bound pamphlets sold as "comic books" in the early 1930s.