Bringing Up Father — 1925-11-10

Four panels follow Jiggs as he borrows a rapid-fire gun from an admiral to frighten burglars away from his porch. He reports success to Maggie — then she informs him the crooks have simply stolen the weapon, and he will have to pay for it. McManus's line work is confident and economical: checked suit, top hat, and Maggie's floral dress read instantly across tiny newsprint columns. Bringing Up Father launched in 1913 and ran for decades, syndicated internationally by International Feature Service. George McManus refined the domestic-comedy strip to a formal system — recurring characters with fixed silhouettes, punch-line final panels, and interlocking speech balloons — tools every subsequent cartoonist inherited directly from the daily newspaper page.