Bringing Up Father — May 27, 1925

Four panels follow Jiggs, the Irish-immigrant bricklayer turned millionaire, as he discovers a mysterious bundle, wrestles with whether to investigate the address on it, and is interrupted by a servant announcing a visitor — who turns out to deliver a diamond-patterned package to Jiggs's door. McManus's line is fluid and architectural, his figures round-shouldered and expressive, his speech balloons shaped to character. Bringing Up Father launched in 1913 and ran for decades, syndicated globally by King Features. Daily strips like this one were the direct precursor to the comic book: the recurring cast, sequential panels, and balloon-driven dialogue that artists such as McManus, Outcault, and Dirks codified became the visual grammar every subsequent comic form inherited.