Bringing Up Father — buf400723

Four panels follow the familiar domestic standoff: a rumpled husband protests he'd rather not call on the well-connected Mr. Smaltz, while his towering, elegantly dressed wife insists he go. He relents, arrives at the door to learn Smaltz is out pitching horseshoes at a blacksmith yard, and delivers a dry closing shrug — 'Oh well, not so bad.' McManus's line work is immediately recognizable: the wife's chandelier posture and spotted gown, the husband's checkered vest and defeated slouch, speech balloons nested neatly above each figure. *Bringing Up Father*, syndicated from 1913, made Jiggs and Maggie household names across hundreds of papers and directly seeded the anthology comic books of the late 1930s, which were initially little more than reprinted Sunday-page strips repackaged for the newsstand.