Bringing Up Father — buf370525

Four panels follow Jiggs, the stocky, cigar-chomping social climber of George McManus's long-running daily, through a simple domestic loop: complaining at the dinner table that he's tired of pork chops, muttering that he's had so many he's 'starting to grunt,' announcing he'll tell Maggie, then calling the butcher — to order more pork chops. McManus's line is fluid and elegant, his figures rounded and confident, his speech balloons cleanly lettered. Launched in 1913, Bringing Up Father was among the strips that taught readers worldwide how to follow sequential panels and dialogue balloons — visual conventions now so ingrained we forget they had to be invented.