ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

Bringing Up Father — buf400402

· ca. April 2, 1940 (King Features Syndicate)

Bringing Up Father — buf400402
George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, following Irish immigrant Jiggs and his socially ambitious wife Maggie through decades of domestic comedy. This strip finds Jiggs touring Washington, D.C., as a guide rattles off senators with punning state-name surnames — Dick Kota, Ken Tucky, Cal Orado, Neb Raska, Hugh Taw — until Jiggs spots a crowd surrounding a equestrian statue and wonders aloud whether those are senators too. McManus's draftsmanship is elegant: confident brushwork, well-dressed figures, architectural backgrounds evoking the Capitol Mall. The syndicated Sunday page, running here as a condensed daily-format strip, represents exactly the newspaper funnies ecosystem that taught readers to follow recurring characters across weeks and years — the direct seedbed from which the comic book format grew.

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