Bringing Up Father — buf400326

Four panels set in Washington, D.C.: Jiggs, George McManus's Irish-immigrant social climber in his signature top hat, strolls past the Washington Monument muttering about presidential-nomination hot air. A smooth political insider approaches, volunteers his insider knowledge, and when Jiggs asks who will be nominated, the man announces — himself, Senator Ward Healer. The gag lands on the name alone. McManus draws in his characteristic art-nouveau-influenced line: sinuous figures, bold hatching, immaculate tailoring rendered with ink economy. *Bringing Up Father*, syndicated from 1913, ran in hundreds of papers for decades and helped standardize the horizontal daily strip format — sequential panels, speech balloons, a fixed cast — the direct structural ancestor of the comic book page.