Bringing Up Father — buf391005

Four panels follow Jiggs, the Irish-immigrant social climber, on a winter holiday. In panel one he attempts ice-skating; panels two and three show his wife Maggie chatting with another woman—he claims he'll go horseback riding rather than skate; panel four finds him collapsed indoors, bruised, asking for a pillow while insisting he's been skating. George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* for King Features in 1913, running it until his death in 1954. His fluid Art Nouveau linework and precisely lettered speech balloons set a visual standard that daily newspaper strips carried directly into the first comic books, which were initially just reprinted strips. McManus's recurring domestic comedy—social aspiration, marital combat, physical pratfall—established the episodic gag structure that defined the medium's first half-century.