From the exhibition
Bringing Up Father — buf401002
· c. 1940s (King Features Syndicate)

George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, and it ran for nearly nine decades — one of the longest-lived strips in American newspaper history. This daily strip follows the familiar dynamic: Maggie, erect and imperious in her floral dress, berates husband Jiggs over a supposed sighting of Cousin Larry in a patrol wagon. Jiggs phones the police station to check; the desk sergeant reports back that the man was hardworking and unwanted — not even by the police over the hill. McManus's clean brushline, expressive silhouettes, and tightly sequenced six-panel gag structure exemplify the newspaper strip's mature grammar — speech balloons carrying all narrative weight, recurring characters driving the comedy — the very conventions that daily pages exported directly into the first comic books of the 1930s.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain