ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

Bringing Up Father — buf400719

· Published July 19, 1940 (King Features Syndicate)

Bringing Up Father — buf400719
George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, making Jiggs and Maggie among the longest-running characters in American comics. This three-panel daily shows the domestic chaos that drove the strip for decades: a woman tells her daughter that Jiggs has been left to paint father's room white — the final panel reveals he has painted everything indiscriminately: suits, mirror, sofa, even the dog. McManus drew in a fluid Art Nouveau line, his women crowned with elaborate hair, his figures rubbery and expressive. Newspaper strips like this one were the direct seedbed of the comic book: their panel grids, speech balloons, and recurring cast established the visual language that anthology comics would repackage and sell from newsstands beginning in 1933.

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