Bringing Up Father — buf411102f

George McManus's *Bringing Up Father* ran continuously from 1913 until well past mid-century, making it one of the longest-lived strips in syndication history. This Sunday page — dated 11-2 in the lower-right corner, copyright 1941, King Features Syndicate — follows the familiar engine: nouveau-riche Maggie schemes to climb society, while her husband Jiggs quietly maneuvers to enjoy himself instead. Here Jiggs orchestrates a ticket scheme so the Robbahouses attend the opera with Maggie, freeing him to watch a revue he has wanted to see for months. McManus's draftsmanship is distinctive — fat brushwork, decorative Art Nouveau borders, characters built from confident ovals and ink-black silhouettes. His mastery of the speech-balloon as both dialogue vehicle and compositional element helped standardize the visual grammar every subsequent comic book artist inherited.