Bringing Up Father — 1925-09-02

A four-panel daily strip in McManus's signature art-nouveau linework: Jiggs, the parvenu Irishman in his checked suit and tilted hat, sits bored at the seashore, spots a woman in a bathing suit, and volunteers to hold her dog while she swims — only to be threatened with a choking by the small terrier. The gag is compact and wordless in its punchline. Bringing Up Father launched in 1913 and ran for decades, making Jiggs and his social-climbing wife Maggie internationally recognized figures. McManus's decorative panel borders, expressive silhouettes, and fluid balloon lettering helped codify the visual grammar — recurring cast, sequential panels, integrated dialogue — that newspaper comic strips handed directly to the comic book format when anthology reprints of such dailies became the first commercial comic books in the early 1930s.