Bringing Up Father — buf401109

Three panels follow Jiggs, the parvenu Irish-American in top hat and tails, dispatched by his imperious wife Maggie to visit a Mr. Sam Pulcase — a successful businessman she wants as a partner. Jiggs grumbles he doesn't like the man; Maggie overrides him. In the middle panel Jiggs trudges alone past a lamppost toward the office. The final panel delivers the gag: Pulcase is out, but Jiggs — surrounded by a gaggle of glamorous, elaborately dressed women in the waiting room — announces cheerfully, 'I'll wait.' McManus's line is fluid and confident, his figures exaggerated but precise. Running from 1913 until McManus's death in 1954, *Bringing Up Father* was among the longest-lived and most widely syndicated strips in American newspaper history, its recurring cast and sequential panel grammar helping establish the visual conventions that daily and Sunday pages handed directly to the nascent comic-book form.