Bringing Up Father — buf400514

Four panels show Jiggs mid-packing chaos: luggage everywhere, a woman in an elaborate hat insisting she has checked every closet, Jiggs agreeing — then the final panel erupts as he opens a closet door and an avalanche of hidden objects buries him. George McManus drew *Bringing Up Father* from 1913 until his death in 1954, making it one of the longest-running continuity gags in American comics. McManus's clean crosshatching, exaggerated motion lines, and precisely lettered speech balloons were absorbed into comic-book grammar before comic books existed as a format. The strip's physical slapstick — objects in flight, doorways as punchline — became a structural template that panel-based visual storytelling still follows.