Bringing Up Father — buf400511

George McManus's *Bringing Up Father* (launched 1913) follows Jiggs, a newly rich Irish immigrant, and his socially ambitious wife Maggie. In this daily strip—copyrighted 1940 per the imprint—Jiggs finds a hotel in the desert to his companions' surprise, then steps into what appears to be a film or stage set, where seated figures debate whether he fits a 'bar-room scene.' McManus's rounded, elegantly inked line, checkerboard vest on Jiggs, and brisk six-panel pacing are signatures of his craft. Strips like this one are the direct ancestors of the comic book: newsprint Sunday pages and dailies established recurring characters, panel-to-panel continuity, and the speech balloon grammar that anthology reprint publishers packaged into the first comic books by the mid-1930s.