Bringing Up Father — buf430321f

George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, running it continuously for decades and helping fix the grammar of the American comic strip: rigid panel grids, expressive silhouette gags, and speech balloons as architecture. This Sunday page follows the eternal triangle of henpecked Jiggs, imperious Maggie, and an unwanted guest — Mrs. Chattenblab, a windy neighbor who talks ancestral genealogy and refuses to leave. Jiggs fakes illness to escape, gets nursed instead, and is finally sent on a drug-store errand with visible delight. McManus's line is sleek and theatrical: Art Nouveau furniture, exaggerated posture, and a crisp black-and-white contrast that photographs well on newsprint. Sunday pages like this one were the direct commercial and formal ancestor of the comic book.