Bringing Up Father — buf400503

George McManus's *Bringing Up Father* ran from 1913 to 2000, making it one of the longest-lived strips in syndication history. This four-panel daily follows the perennial comic engine McManus perfected: Maggie, dressed in Dallas cowboy regalia — ten-gallon hat, checkered suit — reports to a friend by telephone, then encounters her husband Jiggs, equally costumed, sweating under the oversized hat. The punchline lands in the final panel: the hat is useful for smuggling corned beef back to the hotel room. McManus drew with a confident, decorative line — note the Art Nouveau curlicues on furniture, the expressive silhouettes — a style that influenced a generation of cartoonists. Newspaper strips like this one, reprinted and staple-bound in the 1930s, were the direct commercial ancestor of the comic book format.