Bringing Up Father — buf370216

Four panels of McManus's long-running daily strip follow two women gossiping — about little Minnie Fish earning a diploma, unreliable newsboys, melodrama villains sweating in fur coats — before the final gag lands on a trio of acrobatic kids stacking themselves into a human tower, billing themselves "The Reach Bros." McManus draws in his characteristic art-nouveau-inflected line: bonnet ribbons, polka-dot dresses, exaggerated silhouettes. Bringing Up Father, launched by George McManus in 1913 and syndicated by King Features, ran for over eight decades. Its recurring immigrant social-climber premise and dependable gag structure helped establish the newspaper daily strip as a self-contained narrative unit — the direct template from which 1930s comic-book reprint anthologies were assembled and sold as a new medium.