Bringing Up Father — 1925-02-25

George McManus's daily strip follows Jiggs, a nouveau-riche Irishman perpetually caught between his wife Maggie's social climbing and his own preference for pool halls and corned beef. In this four-panel strip, Maggie dispatches Jiggs to the opera with a Mr. Smith; Jiggs rebuffs the man on the stairs, then pivots when Smith produces two tickets to the Rivet Slingers' Ball — Jiggs's kind of evening. McManus's draftsmanship is ornate: crosshatched suits, decorative wallpaper borders, and expressive silhouettes give every panel a Broadway-poster density. Launched in 1913, Bringing Up Father ran for nearly a century and was among the first strips syndicated internationally, its collected reprints helping establish the template for what would become the comic book format.