Bringing Up Father — buf370608

Four panels follow a father-and-son sales comedy: a boss sends his son to call on Mr. Ivar Rekeys, expecting failure; the son returns triumphant, having sold two boxes of nails, two washtubs, and a piano — only to reveal the customer paid by check and they now owe him $2,888.60. George McManus launched Bringing Up Father in 1913, following Irish immigrant Jiggs and his social-climbing wife Maggie. Running nearly six decades, it was among the longest-lived American comic strips and an early proof that recurring working-class characters could sustain serialized newspaper comedy. McManus's clean ink line, expressive body language, and brisk balloon placement helped codify the visual grammar later collected into the first comic books of the 1930s.