Bringing Up Father — buf391010

Bringing Up Father, created by George McManus and syndicated from 1913 until his death in 1954, follows nouveaux-riche Irish immigrant Jiggs and his socially ambitious wife Maggie. This 1939 daily strip unfolds across six panels: Jiggs rhapsodizes about his great-grandfather's frontier adventures through Gargle Gulch while the family rides in an open automobile; arriving in the tiny mountain town, Maggie asks what it's noted for; a laconic local delivers the punchline — the jail is the only thing built since great-grandpa's time. McManus's elegant Art Nouveau linework, precise crosshatching, and expressive balloon lettering helped standardize the visual grammar that early comic-book publishers directly reprinted, making newspaper dailies the literal prototype of the American comic book.