Bringing Up Father — buf370105

Three panels track the domestic comedy of Jiggs and Maggie, George McManus's long-running daily strip launched in 1913. Here Maggie, in bridal veil, waxes nostalgic about lace curtains repurposed as a wedding veil; a middle panel crowds the frame with the enormous Lotsakids family as a harried parent tries to count all the children (Danny, Kitty, Henry, Timmy missing in turn); the final panel reveals a capsizing ocean liner — the punchline being that the ship's bar, and father, were both on the wrong side. McManus's ligne-claire elegance — Art Nouveau flourishes, immaculate crosshatching, expressive crowd choreography — exemplifies the newspaper daily strip format that directly fed the first comic book reprints of the 1930s, making strips like this the true structural ancestors of the American comic book.