Bringing Up Father — 1916-12-09

Four panels, bench setting: Jiggs and a white-haired acquaintance debate Prohibition's approach. The stranger predicts the whole country will go dry; Jiggs, ever the saloon-loving Irish immigrant made good, grows visibly agitated — stars and shock-lines flying — finally retorting that he's 'gittin' dryer every second listenin'' to the man talk. McManus draws in his signature thick-outlined style, figures rotund and expressive, speech balloons integrated cleanly into the composition. Bringing Up Father, launched by McManus in 1913 for King Features, became one of the most widely syndicated strips in the world. These newspaper dailies — with their recurring characters, sequential panels, and balloon dialogue — were the direct formal ancestors of the comic book, establishing conventions still in use today.