From the exhibition
Bringing Up Father — buf391103
· ca. 1939 (copyright date visible in strip)

Three panels follow Jiggs and Maggie, George McManus's long-running comic-strip couple, on a sightseeing trip to Fort Worth. Maggie, in hat and dress, urges Jiggs to fetch their son-in-law; Jiggs, cane in hand and top hat askew, knocks at a door announcing himself as "Lord Worthnotten"; the final panel reveals the daughter and son-in-law have simply gone to the movies. McManus's clean brush line, crosshatched shadows, and expressive balloon lettering are on full display. *Bringing Up Father* launched in 1913 and ran for decades, syndicated internationally. Strips like this one — daily and Sunday pages produced at industrial scale — directly supplied the page-reprint anthologies that became the first American comic books in the early 1930s.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain