Bringing Up Father — buf401129

George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, and it ran for decades as one of the most widely syndicated strips in American newspapers. This daily strip — four panels, black-and-white, with McManus's characteristic clean linework and elegantly dressed figures — shows Jiggs approached by a slick stranger claiming to represent the Cal Lateral Bank, offering twice cash value for acreage Jiggs owns on Newt Sound. The gag turns on the smooth-talking pitch meeting Jiggs's bewildered skepticism, punctuated by the guards throwing him out and a companion asking "What's all this about?" McManus's confident panel composition and expressive balloon placement exemplify the visual grammar that newspaper comic strips pioneered — the very grammar that, when pages were bundled and reprinted, produced the first comic books.