Bringing Up Father — buf401112

Four panels follow Jiggs, the Irish-immigrant social climber in top hat and tails, being routed from home by his imperious wife Maggie and ordered to walk to his office five miles away. He flags a cop for a taxi tip, gets threatened with arrest for disturbing the peace, then congratulates himself that the officer's bluster means he'll finally get some rest at the office. McManus's line work is sinuous and elegant—Art Nouveau curves on every lamppost and lapel—while his speech balloons drive the gag with precise comic rhythm. Launched in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* was among the first strips to build an entire recurring domestic universe, its daily and Sunday pages forming the direct commercial and formal template from which the comic book emerged as a collected, then original, medium.