Bringing Up Father — buf401212

Four panels track Jiggs's domestic misery: a boy announces he leads a band; Jiggs phones a child psychologist named Rob Duffe, inviting him over; the doctor arrives confident in his expertise; Jiggs's wife is away, so he has brought the children along — one of whom immediately demands a rock to throw at a window. George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, making Jiggs and Maggie among the longest-running characters in American comics. McManus's clean brushwork, expressive silhouettes, and elegant Art Nouveau furnishings set a visual standard that influenced a generation of cartoonists. The daily newspaper strip — syndicated to hundreds of papers — was the direct commercial and formal ancestor of the comic book, establishing the panel sequence, speech balloon, and recurring cast that define the medium.