Bringing Up Father — 1919-07-12

Four panels follow Jiggs, the newly-rich Irish-American parvenu, through a compressed comic arc: his daughter warns him not to hire Mr. Jones; a young man then presents himself to Jiggs announcing he's been thinking about going to work; Jiggs offers him any job, starting at the bottom; the final panel reveals the punch — "start by taking some swimming lessons," as stars burst around the applicant's head. McManus's line is fluent Art Nouveau turned vernacular: sinuous silhouettes, patterned waistcoats, and expressive staging inside spare rectangular panels. Launched in 1913 and syndicated by King Features, Bringing Up Father ran daily and Sunday for decades, its recurring cast and sequential panel grammar helping establish the conventions that proto-comic-book compilers would soon bind and sell as a new medium.