Bringing Up Father — buf390831

Three panels show Jiggs, the Irish-immigrant social climber, seated with a patrician acquaintance who proposes a London trip with an elephant-hunting detour through Africa. Jiggs nervously recalls lost companions—"the lions got them"—and by the final panel a butler in full suit of armor delivers the punchline: pack the trunk, skip Africa. George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913 for King Features, running it nearly four decades. McManus's clean Art Deco linework, elaborate interior décor, and expressive balloon lettering refined the daily-strip format that syndicates were packaging into reprint pamphlets—the direct precursor of the comic book. His recurring cast and cliff-edge gag structure gave newspaper strips their first true serialized personality.