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From the exhibition

Bringing Up Father — buf430926f

· George McManus, King Features Syndicate; syndication date uncertain, copyright notice visible as 1943

Bringing Up Father — buf430926f
George McManus launched *Bringing Up Father* in 1913, making it one of the longest-running strips in American newspaper history. This Sunday page follows Jiggs — the nouveau-riche Irishman in top hat and spats — as he schemes to escape his socially ambitious wife Maggie for a night out with his old gang. The gag turns on mistaken identity and a phone call that unravels everything by bedtime. McManus's draftsmanship is elegant: cross-hatched dinner jackets, fluid crowd scenes, and expressive silhouettes. His clean panel borders and integrated speech balloons exemplify the visual grammar that Sunday newspaper pages handed directly to the first comic books of the late 1930s.

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