Bringing Up Father — buf411109f

George McManus's Bringing Up Father follows Jiggs, a nouveau-riche Irish-American, and his imperious wife Maggie in a perpetual domestic war. This Sunday page opens with daughter Nora asking why Jiggs feuds with Maggie's brother—a pompous student-type Maggie adores. Jiggs is dispatched to make peace; the punchline lands in rubble: the two men have argued about world peace so violently they've demolished a house, with an ambulance on standby. McManus's draftsmanship is elegant—swooping Art Nouveau linework, fluid figure poses, architectural backgrounds drawn with real precision. Launched in 1913, the strip ran for decades, its Sunday pages representing exactly the form that would feed directly into the first comic books: same panel grids, same speech balloons, same recurring cast demanding weekly loyalty from readers.