Bringing Up Father — buf390715

Four panels follow Jiggs, the nouveaux-riche Irish-American social climber, in a drawing-room confrontation with a flustered upper-class visitor. The gag pivots on a telephone call: the visitor's son has eloped with a 'Lassie,' and both men face fainting spells — resolved by an offer of water. McManus draws with confident Art Deco line work: rounded, well-dressed figures, crosshatched upholstery, speech balloons packed with stuttering exposition. *Bringing Up Father* launched in 1913 with George McManus, running in Hearst syndication for decades. Strips like this one — daily and Sunday pages reproduced and stapled into pamphlets — literally *were* the first comic books, establishing panel sequencing, recurring cast, and balloon dialogue as the medium's core grammar.