Bringing Up Father — buf400308

Four panels follow Jiggs, the square-jawed social climber, as his wife Maggie intercepts a visiting Senator — thrilled that a legislator wants her husband's advice on 'a bill which probably is history in the making.' The punchline deflates her: Senator Bill Inhouse merely wants to settle an account at his brother's hat store. George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, running it until his death in 1954. His sinuous Art Nouveau linework — fluid dresses, ornate furniture, expressive silhouettes — gave the strip visual distinction that influenced a generation of cartoonists. Sunday newspaper pages like this one were the direct seedbed of the comic book: their recurring characters, sequential panels, and speech balloons established the grammar that defined the medium.