Bringing Up Father — buf400601

George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, making it one of the longest-running strips in American newspaper history. This daily strip follows the familiar dynamic: Jiggs, the nouveau-riche Irish immigrant in top hat and checked suit, returns home with a horseshoe stuck to his arm after trying to signal a turn — triggering the deadpan punchline that closes the strip. His imperious wife Maggie and her society friends dominate the left panels in McManus's characteristic style: bold ink outlines, ornate Art Nouveau interior decoration, and expressive speech balloons whose lettering carries comic timing. McManus refined the visual grammar newspaper strips pioneered — sequential panels, recurring cast, gag-per-strip rhythm — that directly shaped the comic book format when publishers began reprinting Sunday pages as bound pamphlets in the 1930s.