Bringing Up Father — buf401111

Four panels follow the eternal Jiggs-and-Maggie dynamic: their daughter reports that Maggie is enforcing an early-to-office rule for Jiggs; Jiggs deflects with bluster about his business schedule; he then bolts, glimpsed fleeing down the staircase; and Maggie, already on the telephone, cheerfully revises reality for the servant James—announcing her husband will breakfast at ten. George McManus drew *Bringing Up Father* from 1913 until his death in 1954, his Art Nouveau-inflected linework and crosshatching distinguishing it from rougher contemporaries. The strip's recurring characters, interlocking speech balloons, and timed panel beats were absorbed wholesale into the first comic books of the 1930s, which reprinted newspaper dailies exactly like this one—making McManus's pages literal blueprints for the medium.