Bringing Up Father

Four panels track a street fight involving Dinty Moore, watched from a stoop by a neighbor who mutters that Dinty is never happy unless he's brawling. A second figure, bewildered by the noise, calls police headquarters to report the hour-long scrap. The final panel reveals the punchline: Dinty had been winning the whole time. George McManus launched Bringing Up Father in 1913, centering Irish immigrant social climber Maggie and her reluctant husband Jiggs — Dinty Moore being Jiggs's saloon-keeping pal. McManus's clean ink line, decorative Art Nouveau furniture, and tightly sequenced daily panels helped standardize the visual conventions — reactive close-ups, telephone gags, recurring supporting cast — that syndicates would soon repackage into the first comic book reprints of the 1930s.