Bringing Up Father — buf391107

Four panels follow Jiggs, the nouveaux-riche Irish-American bricklayer, as his son-in-law escorts him through Topeka's nightlife. A conspiratorial conversation at a bar leads the pair through silhouetted streets to an increasingly rowdy club, climaxing with Jiggs airborne—launched, presumably, by his furious wife Maggie—while a bystander pleads she telephone their son-in-law at 2 a.m. George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, running it for decades across King Features syndication. His fluid Art Nouveau linework, architecturally detailed crowd scenes, and crisp balloon lettering set draftsmanship benchmarks that influenced a generation of cartoonists. The daily strip format McManus perfected—recurring cast, escalating situation, physical-comedy payoff—directly shaped the anthology reprints that became the first true comic books in the early 1930s.