Bringing Up Father — buf390925

Three panels follow the recurring domestic triangle of *Bringing Up Father*, George McManus's long-running King Features strip launched in 1913. Here Maggie, crowned and gowned in her signature social-climber finery, tells a visitor that her husband Jiggs is upstairs studiously absorbed in maps and pamphlets from their trip. Cut to the final panel: Jiggs sits crossword-puzzle in hand, asking what four-letter word means 'speedy.' McManus's brushwork is confident and decorative—swirling wallpaper, elegant figure-work, bold zip-a-tone shadows. His strip pioneered the recurring cast and domestic-comedy formula that fed directly into early comic book reprints; *Famous Funnies* (1934) and its imitators reprinted exactly this kind of daily newspaper continuity, making the syndicated strip the structural and commercial ancestor of the American comic book.