From the exhibition
Bringing Up Father — buf400427
· April 27, c. 1940 (King Features Syndicate)

Four panels track a classic Jiggs-style hotel-bill dispute: a bald, portly man is handed an enormous itemized bill, phones the manager to demand corrections on nineteen overcharges, is told three more items will be added, refuses to pay — then is intercepted by his elaborately dressed, top-hatted wife, who announces she has already settled the account. George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, making it one of the longest-running American strips. His clean brushwork, confident spotted blacks, and expressive balloon lettering exemplify the daily-strip draftsmanship that taught cartoonists worldwide how sequential panels, recurring characters, and punch-line final frames could sustain narrative across decades — the direct ancestor of the comic book format.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain