Bringing Up Father — buf400207

George McManus's *Bringing Up Father* ran from 1913 until his death in 1954, making it one of the longest continuous newspaper strips in American history. This three-panel daily shows Jiggs — the nouveau-riche Irish-American in top hat and checked suit — learning that throwing coins in a wishing well guarantees wealth and a return to Florida. He enthusiastically hurls in a fistful, only to trigger a geyser-like explosion that sends everyone airborne in the final panel. McManus's draftsmanship is distinctive: lush Art Nouveau ornamental borders, fluid ink lines, and expressive rubber-limbed figures. Strips like this one, syndicated to hundreds of papers simultaneously, provided the recurring characters, speech balloons, and sequential panel grammar that early comic-book publishers simply repackaged between cardboard covers — the daily strip *is* the prototype.