From the exhibition
Bringing Up Father — buf400718
· Published July 18, 1943 (date visible lower right: 7-18; copyright line reads 1943, King Features Syndicate)
George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, and it ran for decades as one of King Features' flagship strips. This daily follows the eternal domestic war between Jiggs — pug-nosed, checkered-suited, hen-pecked Irish-American nouveau riche — and his imperious wife Maggie. Four panels move briskly: Maggie evicts Jiggs so painters can work; he retreats to his office claiming it's quiet; his boss catches him there having ordered the same painters in. McManus's draftsmanship is unusually refined for the comics page — Art Nouveau curlicues in the women's hair, immaculate brushwork on the figures. The strip exemplifies how newspaper syndication industrialized sequential storytelling, fixing panel grids, speech balloons, and recurring cast as the template comic books would inherit wholesale.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain
