Bringing Up Father — buf430815f

Jiggs, the parvenu Irish-American husband in top hat and morning coat, discovers what he takes to be a bomb left by his nemesis Banigan and arranges to have it delivered back — only to learn at the strip's close that it was simply a can of coffee. McManus runs twelve panels across three tiers, deploying crisp cross-hatching, expressive silhouettes, and speech balloons with tightly coiled lettering that are direct descendants of Richard Outcault's and Rudolph Dirks's turn-of-the-century innovations. Launched in 1913, *Bringing Up Father* was among the first strips syndicated globally, and its recurring domestic-comedy structure — recurring cast, continuous storyline, visual shorthand for character — supplied the template that early comic-book editors simply reprinted and, eventually, imitated.