Bringing Up Father — 1925-03-05

Four panels track a domestic chess-match between Jiggs, the stout Irish-American social climber, and his imperious wife Maggie. In the first, Jiggs schemes aloud from his armchair: if he moans and acts lonesome, Maggie will let him out. Panel two finds him yawning extravagantly—'Ho-Hum!!!'—while Maggie watches, skeptical question-mark overhead. Panel three: she announces it seems to be working. Panel four delivers the reversal: she has phoned 'the Count de Coons' to come keep him company. Jiggs's 'Huh:' says everything. McManus's linework is elegantly fluid—Art Nouveau curves domesticated into gag timing—and his use of the speech balloon as both dialogue and character reaction exemplifies the visual grammar newspaper comic strips codified before comic books existed as a format. Bringing Up Father launched in 1913 and ran syndicated in hundreds of papers worldwide, making McManus one of the medium's first international celebrities.