Bringing Up Father — buf400116

Three panels follow Jiggs — the Irish-immigrant social climber of George McManus's long-running strip — navigating Washington, D.C. In the first, his wife Maggie announces that cousin Danny O'Gaffy is somewhere at the U.S. Capitol and that President Franklin D. Roosevelt himself might make introductions. The middle panel shows Jiggs baffled beneath the Capitol dome, wondering how he'll ever locate Danny. The third delivers the punchline: Danny, perched improbably atop a curved architectural form, spots Jiggs and hollers down. McManus's line work — elegant curling Art Nouveau flourishes married to broad slapstick staging — exemplifies the Sunday newspaper page as the true laboratory of sequential art. *Bringing Up Father*, syndicated from 1913, gave the emerging medium its template: recurring cast, speech balloons driving plot, and visual gags timed across panels like beats in vaudeville.