ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

Bringing Up Father — buf400603

· June 3, 1940

Bringing Up Father — buf400603
George McManus's *Bringing Up Father* — syndicated from 1913 and still running strong in 1940 — follows Irish-immigrant nouveau-riche Jiggs, forever caught between his wife Maggie's social ambitions and his own love of corned beef and old pals. In this Sunday strip, Jiggs's son-in-law has been loose in Santa Cruz for two hours; panels two and three show him promenading with a fashionable woman, cane aloft, quoting the old seaside-excursion song; the final panel reveals him asleep on a bench, snoring Z's into the salt air. McManus's draftsmanship — crisp crosshatching, elegant Art Nouveau flourishes on clothing, expressive silhouette — set a visual standard that shaped the entire Sunday-page tradition from which comic books directly descended.

Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain