Bringing Up Father — buf390727

Four horizontal panels follow a telephone call in which Maggie—the socially ambitious wife—coaches her husband Jiggs on how to address their daughter's aristocratic caller, Lady Worthnotten. Jiggs fumbles; Maggie threatens to punch him in the nose. The daughter, lounging on a chaise, coos about moving to Stratford-on-Avon; Maggie preens at the news; then she scolds Jiggs again for ignorance of English geography. George McManus drew *Bringing Up Father* from 1913 until his death in 1954, his sinuous Art Nouveau linework and lace-curtain domestic sets making it one of the most widely syndicated strips on earth. Daily strips like this one were the direct commercial seedbed of the comic book: same panels, same balloons, same recurring cast—reprinted in pamphlet form, they became the format's template.