Bringing Up Father — 31 July 1929

George McManus's long-running daily strip follows Jiggs, a nouveau-riche Irishman tormented by social aspiration and domestic friction. In this four-panel installment, the number eighteen becomes a running gag: Jiggs complains his eighteen-day diet has soured him on the very word, whereupon a college man volunteers an escalating litany of eighteens — graduation date, age, grandfather's birth year, eighteen children — until Jiggs, exasperated, flattens him. McManus's draftsmanship is elegant: crosshatched three-piece suits, top hats, expressive silhouettes, and speech balloons whose text carries the full comic weight. Launched in 1913 in the New York American, Bringing Up Father exemplifies the Hearst syndicate daily strip — the direct ancestor of the comic book, establishing panel sequencing, recurring characters, and balloon-driven narrative as the medium's foundational grammar.