ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

Bringing Up Father — buf390607

· Daily strip, 1939 (copyright date visible in masthead)

Bringing Up Father — buf390607
Three panels follow a father crouched on the floor trying to coax a crawling baby to answer to the name "Dinty" — chanting "Hello-Dinty-Dinty-Me Boy" — while the mother erupts in the second panel, accusing him of sneaking the name past her. The third panel ends with her insisting the baby deserves something grander: Ethelbert or Algermond. George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* for King Features in 1913, running it until his death in 1954. The strip's domestic tug-of-war between the socially ambitious Maggie and her easy-going husband Jiggs became one of the longest-running gags in newspaper history. McManus's clean brushwork, Art Nouveau flourishes, and tightly choreographed panel rhythm directly shaped the visual grammar — recurring cast, sequential panels, speech balloons — that early comic-book editors and artists took as their model.

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