From the exhibition
Bringing Up Father — buf401116
· George McManus, King Features Syndicate, c. 1940s (dated 11-16 in strip)

Four panels follow Jiggs, the parvenu Irish-American millionaire, arriving late at his office building. The elevator boy has quit, forcing Jiggs to climb twenty flights; he reaches his floor winded, only to find his slovenly office cleaner asleep on the job. McManus draws with elegant Art Nouveau line work—curved staircases, rococo flourishes—that sits in comic contrast to Jiggs's rumpled dignity. *Bringing Up Father* launched in 1913 and ran for decades, syndicated globally. McManus refined the visual grammar pioneered by strips like *The Yellow Kid*: sequential panels, integrated speech balloons, and a recurring cast whose domestic tensions drove readers back issue after issue—the very template the nascent comic-book industry would repackage and sell on newsstands.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain