Bringing Up Father — buf371021

Four panels follow Jiggs, the Irish-immigrant social climber created by George McManus, as he dreads coming home to his wife Maggie's piano-practice singing. Finding the house suspiciously quiet, he wonders aloud — until their niece Quietina explains that Maggie's caterwauling drove her away to play at a friend's house. In the final panel Jiggs slips the girl a quarter, sworn to secrecy. McManus's clean ink line, patterned waistcoats, and expressive silhouettes represent newspaper-strip draftsmanship at its most assured. Bringing Up Father launched in 1913 and ran for decades, its domestic-conflict formula and recurring cast helping standardize the daily comic strip — the direct ancestor, via syndicated page reprints, of the first comic books of the 1930s.