Bringing Up Father — buf400321

Four panels in George McManus's signature cross-hatched ink style: Jiggs's wife Maggie announces she has hired a social-etiquette tutor to prepare the family for Washington society. Jiggs, ever the reluctant social climber, mutters that the trip was supposed to be a pleasure jaunt. A dapper instructor appears, directing him to his room — Jiggs acquiesces only to "keep peace in th' family." The tutor then demonstrates how to enter a room; the final panel shows him demonstrating, with equal flair, how to *leave* one — boots-first through the wall, stars flying. McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, and its recurring domestic slapstick helped establish the newspaper strip as a vehicle for serialized character comedy, a direct ancestor of the comic-book format that syndicated Sunday pages made commercially viable.