Bringing Up Father — buf430422f

George McManus's *Bringing Up Father* follows Jiggs, a newly rich Irish-American who longs to sneak off to Dinty Moore's chowder party while dodging his socially ambitious wife Maggie. This Sunday page — twelve panels reading left-to-right across three tiers — shows Jiggs scheming by phone, bribing a servant named Algymond, nearly bolting out the back, then discovering the party isn't until tomorrow. McManus's draftsmanship is elegant: rounded figures in sharp black ink, minimal backgrounds that keep comic timing tight. Launched in 1913, the strip ran for decades and helped establish the recurring-cast domestic comedy as a newspaper staple. Sunday pages like this one — reprinted and bundled in the 1930s — were the direct commercial ancestor of the comic book format itself.