From the exhibition
Bringing Up Father — buf411221f
· c. 1941–1943 (King Features Syndicate)

George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, running it continuously for decades and making Jiggs and Maggie two of the most recognized figures in American popular culture. This Sunday page unfolds across sixteen panels: Maggie, hair piled high, bullies the household over a business appointment with a Mr. Roy Elguy, while Jiggs dodges, lounges in bed, and eventually vanishes — leaving Maggie fuming at the punchline word *HERE?* McManus drew with an art-nouveau elegance rare in comics: decorative ironwork, patterned wallpaper, fluid figure lines. His strip helped standardize the Sunday page format — sequential panels, integrated speech balloons, a recurring cast — that publishers then reprinted in pamphlet form, directly producing what we now call the comic book.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain