Bringing Up Father — buf391219

Four panels follow Jiggs, the nouveau-riche Irishman of George McManus's long-running daily strip, as he attempts to visit the state capitol. His socially ambitious wife Maggie explains to their daughter that their elevated position means the governor will naturally want to meet *them*. A cabdriver asks Jiggs "front or back?" At the capitol steps Jiggs calls cheerfully to someone named James — then the final panel delivers the punchline in pure cartoon shorthand: symbolic cursing (?@☆※+!※!!?=※) and the deflated admission "I'm out." McManus's clean Art Deco linework, exaggerated silhouettes, and virtuoso use of speech balloons represent the newspaper daily strip at its commercial and artistic peak — the very form whose page layouts, recurring characters, and sequential panel grammar gave comic books their vocabulary when publishers began reprinting strips as pamphlets in the early 1930s.