Bringing Up Father — buf401114

Three panels follow Jiggs, George McManus's perennial Irish-immigrant social climber in top hat and checkered suit, through a pre-dawn misadventure. Panel one: Jiggs trudges alone toward his office, muttering that seven in the morning is too early. Panel two: a Department of Streets cleaning crew erupts in explosive chaos — cans, brushes, and spray flying in McManus's characteristically exuberant linework. Panel three: a street-sweeping barrel drenches Jiggs, who mutters that only being hit by a truck could complete his misery. McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, and its elegant Art Nouveau borders and expressive balloon lettering helped codify the visual syntax — recurring cast, sequential panels, speech balloons — that newspaper strips handed directly to the first comic books of the late 1930s.