Bringing Up Father — buf371002

McManus's four-panel daily follows Jiggs, the nouveau-riche Irishman in top hat and checked vest, shuffling back to his old haunts after a bout of gout. Meeting a round pal at a bar, he learns their mutual friend Dinty is hospitalized — with gout. The punchline lands in the final panel: Jiggs, who opened bragging about being back on his feet, now admits he can hardly walk himself, leaving his companion with a wordless question mark. McManus draws in fluid ink line with confident crosshatching; the speech balloons cascade naturally across the gutters. Launched in 1913, Bringing Up Father was among the first strips reprinted in collected booklets — the direct precursor to the comic book format — helping establish recurring characters, continuity gags, and panel-to-panel grammar that defined the medium.