Bringing Up Father — buf400509

George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, making it one of the longest-running strips in American newspaper history. This four-panel daily follows Jiggs — newly rich Irish immigrant, incorrigible social climber's husband — as he phones his old gang from afar. His wife Maggie is out, so he connects the boys, and the third panel erupts in a barbershop-quartet chorus: *'She only goes out with her mother, but her mother is out all the time.'* McManus's line work is immaculate: cross-hatched suits, elegant candelabra, musical notes scattering like confetti. The strip helped standardize the speech balloon and the recurring-cast daily format that would directly seed the first comic book anthologies of the late 1930s.