ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

Bringing Up Father — buf430620f

· June 20, 1943 (King Features Syndicate)

Bringing Up Father — buf430620f
George McManus's *Bringing Up Father* follows Jiggs, a newly rich Irish-American laborer, and his socially ambitious wife Maggie. In this Sunday page, Jiggs tries to write a letter in peace; Maggie drives him out with the vacuum cleaner, then orders him to fix up the parlor. He hangs framed pictures, demolishes the room entirely, surveys the wreckage in horror, and sprints to a train station demanding a one-way ticket to Mexico. McManus's draftsmanship is exceptional—ornate architectural detail, fluid figure work, and expressive slapstick staging. Launched in 1913, the strip ran continuously for decades and exemplifies how the newspaper Sunday page established comics' core visual grammar: sequential panels, integrated speech balloons, and recurring characters whose domestic conflicts readers followed week after week.

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