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Bringing Up Father — Omaha Daily Bee, April 19, 1914

· April 19, 1914

Bringing Up Father — Omaha Daily Bee, April 19, 1914
George McManus's *Bringing Up Father* follows Jiggs, a newly rich Irish-American laborer, and his socially ambitious wife Maggie. In this Sunday page, the gag turns on a German word — "Gefahr" (danger) — that Jiggs cannot read, misreads, and finally has explained to him by a stranger, to Maggie's exasperation. Six panels move left to right in clean ink line, with speech balloons carrying nearly all the comedy; McManus's figures are elegantly drafted, the men in top hats, Maggie wielding her rolling pin off-panel. Launched in 1913 in Hearst syndication, *Bringing Up Father* ran until 2000, making it one of the longest continuous strips in history. Sunday pages like this one — printed in broadsheet sections and later bound into pamphlets — directly seeded the format that became the comic book by the late 1930s.

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