Bringing Up Father — buf390805

Four panels follow the familiar domestic circuit of Bringing Up Father, George McManus's long-running King Features daily. Here, son Sonny greets Pop outdoors near a smoky, water-edged setting; Pop laments they have no hams to smoke; a worried wife asks what's the matter; and a second woman explains that Sonny won't travel to London because of the fogs. McManus's line is fluid and decorative, his interiors suggesting Art Nouveau wallpaper and rounded furniture. Launched in 1913, the strip featuring social-climbing Maggie and her reluctant husband Jiggs helped establish the daily comic strip as a narrative form—speech balloons, sequential panels, recurring cast—that syndicates packaged into the first comic books by the early 1930s.