ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

Bringing Up Father — buf400225

· King Features Syndicate, c. 1940 (dated 2·25 in strip)

Bringing Up Father — buf400225
George McManus's *Bringing Up Father* ran as both a daily strip and Sunday page from 1913 until his death in 1954, making it one of the longest-running continuities in American newspaper comics. This color Sunday page follows the Irish-immigrant nouveau-riche couple Jiggs and Maggie — he hen-pecked and vase-dodging at home, she socially ambitious — on a sightseeing tour of Philadelphia: Independence Hall, Carpenters' Hall, the Liberty Bell, and the house of Betsy Ross, each panel dense with Jiggs's cheerful ignorance and Maggie's corrective fury. McManus's ligne-claire draftsmanship, his art-nouveau ornamental borders, and his precise use of speech balloons within a grid of varied panel sizes were foundational to the visual grammar every subsequent comic artist inherited.

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