Bringing Up Father — buf391118

Four panels follow Jiggs, the nouveaux-riche Irish-American patriarch of George McManus's long-running daily strip, as he tries to read in peace. His daughter announces Chicago snowfall; a visitor knocks to report the same; his wife asks whether he can see it from his chair; and finally the maid threatens to throw him out the window if he mentions snow again. McManus's line work is fluid and decorative — curvilinear Art Nouveau furniture, crosshatched shadows, expressive balloon lettering. *Bringing Up Father*, syndicated from 1913, was among the earliest strips to anchor recurring characters in domestic comedy, and its panel-by-panel escalation of a single running joke helped establish the rhythmic grammar that daily newspaper comics — direct ancestors of the comic book — handed to every cartoonist who followed.