ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

Bringing Up Father — buf390601

· c. 1939–1940 (copyright date partially visible)

Bringing Up Father — buf390601
This four-panel daily strip opens with a woman seated, holding an infant, urging her husband to reconcile with his brother Dinny. He returns almost immediately, disheveled, explaining he tried flattery — telling Dinny the baby resembled him — and got punched in the eye. The final panel lands a classic misfire-of-goodwill gag. George McManus drew *Bringing Up Father* from 1913 until his death in 1954, chronicling Irish immigrant nouveau-riche Jiggs and his social-climbing wife Maggie. McManus's art — thick ink outlines, decorative wallpaper, exaggerated reaction poses — refined the visual shorthand that newspaper comic strips exported directly into the first comic book reprints of the 1930s, making strips like this one literal blueprints for the medium's page grammar.

Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain