Bringing Up Father

George McManus's Bringing Up Father ran in American newspapers from 1913 until 2000, making it one of the longest-lived syndicated strips in history. This 1929 daily shows four panels: Maggie dispatches her hen-pecked husband Jiggs to fire their cook; Jiggs steels himself and marches to the kitchen; a question mark hangs over his head as he confronts the situation; and the cook's steaming stew instantly disarms him — he and two others are soon praising it hungrily. McManus drew with an elegant Art Nouveau line, curling wallpaper and costumes into decorative flourishes rare in the funnies. His speech balloons, sequential panel rhythm, and recurring cast of fixed social types helped standardize the visual grammar that newspaper comic strips — the direct ancestor of the comic book — handed to every artist who followed.