Bringing Up Father — buf400822

George McManus's *Bringing Up Father* ran daily and Sunday from 1913 until McManus's death in 1954, making it one of the longest-lived strips in American newspaper history. This daily strip turns on a domestic trap: Maggie has sent Jiggs's clothes to the tailor so he cannot attend Dinty Moore's party, but the scheme backfires when Jiggs — shown in silhouette, too shabby to go out — must miss the opera instead. The final panel delivers the punchline in person: Dinty arrives, and Maggie, now elaborately dressed, dreads being seen. McManus's draftsmanship is fluid and decorative, with Art Nouveau curves softening broad slapstick. Strips like this one — panels, speech balloons, recurring characters — formed the direct visual grammar that early comic-book publishers simply reprinted and then imitated.