Bringing Up Father — buf420426

Two Sunday pages from *Bringing Up Father*, George McManus's long-running King Features strip launched in 1913. The upper page follows Archie in a soldier's costume fretting over Rosie's masked-ball outfit, the gags turning on mistaken identity and a silhouetted spy. The lower page is pure McManus set-piece: Maggie holds court through a cascade of rambling family anecdotes—Uncle Tim, Cousin Bobo, Sitten Bill, Alderman Dugan—while Jiggs stands by, mute and beleaguered, as an enormous crowd swirls in the penultimate panel. McManus's line is sinuous Art Nouveau married to vaudeville timing; his elaborate Art Deco interiors and expressive crowd scenes made the strip a formal benchmark. Sunday pages like these, printed in color broadsheet sections, were the direct commercial and visual ancestor of the comic book format that consolidated through the 1930s.