Bringing Up Father — buf401206

Four horizontal panels follow Jiggs and a companion as they congratulate themselves on silencing a horn-playing relative — only to discover, in the punchline panel, that the noise has simply relocated to their own parlor, where Brother Jim blows an enormous tuba while Maggie sits serenely nearby. George McManus's linework is characteristically elegant: cross-hatched suits, a lamp-lit interior, and expressive caricature faces that shift from smug satisfaction to bewildered question marks. McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, making it one of the longest-running strips in syndication history. Its domestic comedy of social aspiration — nouveau-riche Maggie versus old-habits Jiggs — helped establish the recurring-character serial strip as a daily institution, its speech balloons and panel rhythm forming the direct template from which the comic book format would emerge.