Bringing Up Father

Four panels follow the household chaos when a baby won't stop crying. Maggie proposes singing; her off-panel wail silences the infant — but sends neighbors flooding into the hallway to complain. The final gag lands on the line *"Anything is better than that singing."* Signed by George McManus, who launched *Bringing Up Father* for King Features Syndicate in 1913, making it one of the longest-running strips in American newspaper history. McManus's clean ligne-style draftsmanship — bold outlines, decorative interiors, expressive crowd staging — became a model for the syndicated daily strip format whose reprinted page collections, sold as cheap pamphlets in the 1930s, directly preceded the purpose-built comic book.