Bringing Up Father — buf420607f

Nine panels follow Jiggs and his family through a wartime blackout drill gone wrong in the countryside. Jiggs, relaxing away from city life, must extinguish an old kerosene lamp he cannot figure out how to open; wife Maggie and daughter attempt blowing it out, then hammering it; finally they bury it in the yard — where it blazes like a beacon, drawing neighbors from miles around. George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, running it for decades as one of syndication's longest-lived strips. McManus's clean ink line, expressive silhouettes, and Art Nouveau interior ornaments gave the strip a visual elegance that influenced a generation of cartoonists. Sunday pages like this one — color, multi-panel, narrative — were the direct template from which the first comic books were assembled and reprinted.