Bringing Up Father — 1925-10-19

George McManus launched Bringing Up Father in 1913, following nouveau-riche Irish immigrant Jiggs and his social-climbing wife Maggie. In this four-panel daily, Jiggs frets over his advancing baldness, marches to a barbershop for a treatment, receives a cheery "Good mornin', sir!" from the barber — then shuffles out wordlessly, the barber's crestfallen expression doing all the work. The final beat: "What's the matter?" / "Nothin'!" McManus's draftsmanship is fluid and elegant, his figures rounded and expressive, his staging cinematic. Daily newspaper strips like this one were the direct seedbed of the comic book: syndicated pages established panels, speech balloons, and recurring cast as the medium's core grammar, training millions of readers in sequential literacy long before stapled pamphlets existed.