ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

Bringing Up Father — buf391218

· Daily strip, 1939 (copyright date visible in image)

Bringing Up Father — buf391218
Two panels carry the gag: in the first, Jiggs and Maggie stand before Columbus, Ohio's civic center while a tour guide rattles off landmarks — Jiggs cuts straight to the only thing that matters: is there a restaurant noted for corned beef and cabbage? In the second, a crowd of old pals leans from a building shouting greetings ('Hello Jiggs,' 'Hey Jiggsy,' 'H'ya Jiggs'). George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913; by 1939 it ran in hundreds of papers worldwide. McManus's fluid Art Nouveau linework — scalloped drapes, tiled floors, elegant silhouettes — gave daily strips an architectural elegance rare in the form. Strips like this one, syndicated and collected into reprint pamphlets, directly seeded the comic-book format that would explode that same year.

Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain