Bringing Up Father — buf411214f

Ten panels track the chaotic delivery of a salon piece — a heavy upright piano or cabinet — through a bourgeois household by a crew of hapless movers directed by the beleaguered Jiggs. Bricks scatter, fences collapse, a bust is shattered, and every panel ends in fresh catastrophe punctuated by the repeated cry *"Easy!"* George McManus's draftsmanship is unmistakable: Beaux-Arts interior detail rendered in fluid ink line, rotund figures in bowler hats, and speech balloons that drive slapstick rhythm as precisely as stage timing. Launched in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* was among the first strips to use recurring characters and serialized domestic comedy to build a weekly readership — the Sunday page format it helped standardize became the direct template for the comic book page.