Bringing Up Father — buf400628

Four panels follow Jiggs, the social-climbing Irish-American parvenu created by George McManus, as his wife frets over which dress to wear while Jiggs slips out to a restaurant hoping to sit near a movie star named "Lotta Charm." Returning triumphant, he announces he'll wear his full-dress suit — cuing Maggie's inevitable exasperation. McManus's draftsmanship is distinctive: elegantly curling Art Nouveau linework, characters rendered with fluid confidence, and backgrounds that shift from domestic clutter to restaurant luxury. Launched in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* ran for nearly a century and exemplifies the newspaper strip's role as direct ancestor of the comic book — its recurring cast, sequential panels, and speech balloons forming the visual grammar that anthology reprints of such dailies literally became the first comic books.