From the exhibition
Bringing Up Father — buf390916
· ca. 1939, George McManus (1884–1954)

Four panels follow Jiggs and a companion motoring through Southern California — the Santa Susana Pass, Santa Monica Bay, then Santa Catalina glimpsed at sea — as a well-dressed guide rattles off Spanish place names. Jiggs, baffled, asks where Santa Claus is. McManus's line is fluid and confident: top-hatted figures, crosshatched suits, rolling hills rendered in clean ink. *Bringing Up Father* debuted in 1913 and ran for decades in syndication, making Jiggs and Maggie among the most recognized characters in print. McManus refined the comic strip's visual grammar — sequential panels, integrated speech balloons, consistent character design across daily and Sunday formats — influencing the page layouts that the earliest comic book publishers simply reprinted and later imitated.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain