Bringing Up Father — buf430509f

George McManus's *Bringing Up Father* — starring the nouveau-riche Irish immigrant Jiggs and his socially ambitious wife Maggie — ran from 1913 to 2000, making it one of the longest continuous strips in newspaper history. This Sunday page unfolds as a nostalgic reverie: Jiggs, laughing to himself, recounts vignettes from the old neighborhood — a grandfather embarrassed by a baby photo, kids howling in itchy woolen underwear, a circus parade, a boy who graduated from stealing nails to stealing horses. McManus's draftsmanship is assured and florid, his crowd scenes dense with rubbery caricature. Sunday pages like this one — color-separated broadsheets reprinted and stapled together — literally became the first comic books.