Bringing Up Father — buf401009

Four panels follow Jiggs as he gulps a "nerve tonic" — double the prescribed dose, naturally — then positions his boys outside the window as a getaway crew while he summons the courage to face his formidable wife Maggie. The gag pivots on the final panel's single bellowed word: *"MAGGIE — COME HERE—"* McManus's draftsmanship is distinctive: clean brushwork, patterned waistcoats rendered in crosshatch, and characters whose broad silhouettes read instantly across a breakfast table. Launched in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* was among the first strips to build sustained domestic comedy on recurring, fully realized characters — a narrative device American newspaper comics pioneered and that proto-comic-book reprint anthologies then carried into newsstands, establishing the format that became the modern comic book.