Bringing Up Father — buf420920f

Nine panels track a county tax assessor named Ray Zurtax who visits Jiggs's shabby office, hears him dismiss every stick of furniture as worthless junk, then accompanies Mrs. Jiggs (Maggie) through the family's grand mansion — chandelier, tapestried walls, $500,000 price tag — while she brags extravagantly about every room. The final panel lands the punchline: Maggie realizes she just handed the assessor exactly the ammunition he needed. George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, running it for decades as one of the most widely syndicated strips in the world. His lush Art Nouveau linework — ornate interiors drawn with architectural precision — made the Sunday page a weekly showcase, and his recurring cast of social climbers helped establish the repeating-character serial strip as the dominant form newspaper comics would export directly into the first comic books.