Bringing Up Father — buf370713

Four daily panels follow Jiggs, the top-hatted Irish-American social climber, hunting for his missing dog Fifi. He stops at Dinty Moore's saloon-restaurant, where a seated companion reports the dog has been eating the joint out of pretzels. The strip's visual rhythm is brisk: close two-shots, wine glasses as recurring props, and McManus's trademark crosshatched tuxedos and curling smoke lines. George McManus launched Bringing Up Father in 1913, running it for over four decades. His fluid Art Nouveau draftsmanship—decorative wallpaper, elegant linework—elevated the daily strip format at the very moment newspaper comics were establishing the visual grammar, panel sequencing, and recurring-cast storytelling that would directly seed the first comic book anthologies of the 1930s.