ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

Bringing Up Father — buf401017

· Published October 17, c. 1940s (King Features Syndicate)

Bringing Up Father — buf401017
George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, making it one of the longest-running strips in American newspaper history. This daily follows Jiggs — the newly rich Irish-American immigrant — dodging his social-climbing wife Maggie. Here, a smooth-talking visitor claims a family connection to extract a quarter from Jiggs, who then endures a confidential sales pitch at the door; the final panel delivers the punchline as a tonic leaves Jiggs visibly staggered. McManus's draftsmanship is elegant: clean ink lines, expressive silhouettes, and speech balloons whose lettering carries comic timing. Newspaper strips like this one established the visual grammar — sequential panels, recurring cast, cliffhanger rhythm — that directly seeded the comic-book format emerging in the 1930s.

Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain