Bringing Up Father — 1925-02-03

Four panels of domestic comedy: Jiggs counsels Maggie to make peace between their quarreling daughter and son-in-law Billy; Maggie turns on him with a pointed finger and a sharp warning to mind his own business; Jiggs reflects on the weeping daughter alone in her room; then Maggie, moments later, cheerfully accepts a telephone invitation from "Jack" for an auto ride, her tears forgotten. McManus's line is fluid and assured — ornate floral wallpaper, expressive silhouettes, speech balloons integrated into the action. Bringing Up Father launched in 1913 and ran for decades, syndicated internationally. These daily strips, alongside Outcault's Yellow Kid and Dirks's Katzenjammer Kids, established the formal conventions — recurring cast, sequential panels, balloon dialogue — that newspaper comics pages handed directly to the first comic books of the 1930s.