Bringing Up Father — 1925-06-07

George McManus's Bringing Up Father ran in syndication from 1913 until 2000, making it one of the longest-lived strips in American newspaper history. This Sunday page follows Jiggs—stout, top-hatted, eternally hen-pecked—as he schemes to ditch his socially ambitious wife Maggie for a poker game, only to find himself trapped in a hotel room ordering dinner from room service. McManus drew in a fluid Art Deco line, populating grand staircases and hotel lobbies with elegantly curved figures. The twelve-panel layout, speech balloons threaded through architectural interiors, and the recurring-character situation comedy embedded here are foundational conventions: Sunday pages like this one are the direct ancestors of the comic book format that would crystallize by the late 1930s.