From the exhibition
Bringing Up Father — buf400518
· c. 1940s (King Features Syndicate)

George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, making it one of the longest-running strips in American newspaper history. This three-panel daily follows the eternal domestic war between Jiggs—a nouveau-riche Irishman who'd rather eat corned beef than attend society functions—and his imperious wife Maggie, shown here in floral pajamas berating him for sleeping while they're visiting Olympia. Jiggs's deadpan reply—he prefers to dream about a place before seeing it—lands the gag in the final panel with a telephone-complaint twist. McManus's draftsmanship, with its bold outlines, decorative patterning on fabric, and expressive silhouettes, exemplifies the Sunday-page aesthetic that trained readers to move left-to-right through sequential panels—the very visual grammar that made the comic book possible.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain