Bringing Up Father — buf370224

George McManus's Bringing Up Father (syndicated from 1913) follows Irish-immigrant social climber Maggie and her hapless husband Jiggs. In this daily strip, a man pleads unworthiness to a seated woman, recalling how as a child he stood sick in the snow outside her window asking after her health — only to faint, get carried home by a policeman, and lie delirious for days. The women dissolve into cascading "Boo-Hoo" and "Woo-Woo" wails, McManus rendering their weeping with characteristic Art Nouveau-inflected line work and kinetic sound lettering. McManus was among the first cartoonists to systematize speech balloons and recurring cast dynamics — techniques newspaper comic pages pioneered before comic books existed as a form.