ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

Bringing Up Father — buf400315

· March 15, 1940 (daily strip, King Features Syndicate)

Bringing Up Father — buf400315
George McManus's long-running strip follows the eternally henpecked Irish-American nouveau-riche Jiggs and his socially ambitious wife Maggie. In this daily, Jiggs arrives in Washington delighted to escape home troubles, eager to tour the Capitol — only to stumble into a chaotic crowd of politicians jostling to announce their candidacies, each shouting over the next. McManus's draftsmanship is elegant and confident: ornate crosshatching, expressive caricature, and fluid crowd staging across six compact panels. Launched in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* was among the first strips syndicated nationally, its repeating cast and sequential panel grammar directly shaping the visual language that early comic-book publishers would simply repackage and staple together through the late 1930s.

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