Bringing Up Father — buf420531f

George McManus's *Bringing Up Father* follows Jiggs, a newly wealthy Irish-American bricklayer, and his socially ambitious wife Maggie. In this Sunday page, friends urge Jiggs to reason with Maggie about skipping the opera; he tries diplomacy, fails spectacularly, gets physically ejected, and winds up back at Dinty's saloon — his natural habitat. At the opera, Maggie preens in a box beside Mrs. Uppercrust. McManus draws in confident brushwork: rounded, rubbery figures, elegant Art Nouveau flourishes on furniture and gowns, and expressive silent-film mugging that carries gags without words. Launched in 1913, the strip ran for decades and its recurring domestic-war formula directly shaped the rhythm, panel sequencing, and character archetypes that early comic book editors imported wholesale from the Sunday pages.