ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

Bringing Up Father — buf400209

· ca. February 9, 1940 (syndication date inferred from strip numbering)

Bringing Up Father — buf400209
Four daily-strip panels by George McManus follow Jiggs, the parvenu Irish-American millionaire in top hat and checkered suit, as his imperious wife Maggie grants him a timed stroll to Biscayne Bay—no running—to admire the boats. He shuffles off happily; the final panel shows him startled, hat knocked askew, claiming he never heard her call. McManus's line work is graceful and assured: palm trees rendered in crisp crosshatch, figures rooted in solid blacks. *Bringing Up Father* launched in 1913 and ran for nearly a century, making it one of the longest continuous comic strips in history. Its recurring cast, sequential panels, and integrated speech balloons exemplify the visual grammar newspaper strips pioneered—the direct ancestor of the comic book format that followed two decades later.

Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain