Bringing Up Father — buf410816

George McManus's *Bringing Up Father* — starring the nouveau-riche Jiggs and his socially ambitious wife Maggie — ran from 1913 until McManus's death in 1954, making it one of the longest continuous strips in American newspaper history. This Sunday page follows Jiggs pressed into judging a Baby Parade: parents mob him with flattery, children perform on cue, and he awards the cup by pure whim, triggering an outraged crowd. McManus drew in a distinctly Art Nouveau line — sinuous contours, elaborate wallpaper patterns, elegantly dressed women — wrapped around broad ethnic-immigrant comedy. The strip's recurring characters, nested panel sequences, and expressive speech balloons are foundational to the visual grammar every subsequent comic book inherited.