From the exhibition
Bringing Up Father — buf420322f
· March 22, 1942

George McManus's *Bringing Up Father* follows Jiggs, a newly rich Irish-American laborer who would rather play cards with old pals than endure his wife Maggie's social climbing. This Sunday page, dated March 22, 1942 in the strip's own corner notation, runs its domestic battle across four tiers: Maggie orders Jiggs to stay home, uninvited guests arrive for bridge, Jiggs slips out to a card game anyway, and returns hoping she's asleep. McManus's draftsmanship — ornate wallpaper, Art Nouveau flourishes, immaculately rendered evening wear — gives the strip a decorative elegance rare in comics. Launched in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* was among the first syndicated strips to develop locked-in recurring characters and ongoing domestic continuity, directly shaping the narrative conventions that Sunday pages exported into the first comic books of the 1930s.
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