Bringing Up Father — buf400115

George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, and by 1940 it ran in hundreds of papers worldwide. This four-panel daily follows Jiggs — the Irish-immigrant social climber in top hat and checkered suit — who complains of fatigue from sightseeing in Washington, D.C. His imperious wife Maggie dispatches him to a doctor, who delivers the punchline: exercise, travel, a change of scenery. McManus's draftsmanship is elegant and precise — rounded figures, confident brushwork, architectural backgrounds glimpsed through panel edges. The strip exemplifies the syndicated daily as the direct ancestor of the comic book: recurring cast, sequential panels, speech balloons, and a single gag resolved across compressed space — visual grammar that artists like McManus, Outcault, and Herriman essentially invented.