Jiggs and Maggie: From Comic Strip to Stage

This photograph captures actors performing characters from *Bringing Up Father*, George McManus's wildly popular newspaper comic strip that debuted in 1913. The strip followed Irish immigrant Jiggs, who strikes it rich in the lottery, and his wife Maggie as she pushes upward into high society while he pines for his humble saloon and corned beef. The strip's success spawned stage adaptations, films, and merchandise—a pattern that established the template for turning newspaper comics into multimedia franchises. McManus's visual innovations—sequential panels, speech balloons, and slapstick humor—helped define the visual language of comics. *Bringing Up Father* became a cultural phenomenon, running for decades and influencing how Americans thought about class mobility and immigrant assimilation through comedy.