From the exhibition
Bringing Up Father — buf391228
· c. 1930 (copyright date visible in strip)

Four panels follow Jiggs, the nouveau-riche Irish immigrant, and a dapper acquaintance through Pittsburgh's smokestack skyline. Jiggs explains he came "down to th' Industrial Center"; inside a rail car, a whistle startles both men — one sporting a question mark balloon of pure bafflement — before the punchline lands: "I thought it was Maggie's voice." George McManus drew *Bringing Up Father* from 1913 until his death in 1954, its lush Art Nouveau linework and meticulous cross-hatching setting a visual standard for the daily strip. The strip's recurring domestic tension between social-climbing wife Maggie and corned-beef-loving Jiggs ran in hundreds of papers worldwide, making it one of the first globally syndicated comics — the daily newspaper page being the direct ancestor of the comic book format itself.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain