Bringing Up Father — buf401011

George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, making it one of the longest-running American newspaper strips. Its central gag — Irish immigrant Jiggs sneaking corned beef and cabbage while his socially ambitious wife Maggie hurls crockery — never varied much, and here it doesn't need to. Four panels: Jiggs, fortified by 'nerve tonic,' fires the cook; the cook retaliates with flying pots and pans; Maggie shrieks for police; Jiggs, fleeing the debris, wishes he'd thrown the stove instead. McManus's draftsmanship is elegant — clean ink line, confident anatomy, expressive chaos rendered with genuine control. Sunday newspaper strips like this one supplied the page-layout conventions, speech balloons, and recurring-character formula that early comic book publishers simply reprinted and eventually imitated into a new medium.