Bringing Up Father — buf420315f

Jiggs, the henpecked Irish-American social climber, is ordered by his imperious wife Maggie to clean the vacant lot next door before her tea party. He phones a pal to handle it, takes a nap at Dinty's, then mobilizes a truck crew to haul the rubble away — only for Maggie to return and credit *him* for the spotless yard. George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, and its fluid Art Nouveau linework, expressive figure drawing, and precisely timed panel-to-panel gag construction made it one of the most widely syndicated strips in the world. McManus's use of recurring characters and domestic situation comedy directly shaped the conventions that migrated from Sunday newspaper pages into the first comic books of the 1930s.