Bringing Up Father — buf400108

Four panels track Jiggs, the Irish-immigrant-made-good, as he deposits his wife Maggie outside an antique shop in Philadelphia, gets caught in a sudden snowstorm, and ends up buried to his hat brim in a drift, wishing he could flee the city before spring. George McManus's line is elegant and dense — hatched storm diagonals, Jiggs's trademark top hat and checkered coat, a background automobile half-swallowed by snow. McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913 and ran it for nearly four decades, its domestic-friction formula and immaculate draftsmanship influencing generations of cartoonists. Sunday pages and syndicated dailies like this one are the direct ancestors of the comic book, supplying the panel grid, the speech balloon, and the recurring cast that would define the medium.