Bringing Up Father — buf371125

Four black-and-white panels follow Jiggs, the parvenu Irishman in top hat and spats, as he congratulates himself on telling wife Maggie he spent the previous evening at a club with the socially prominent Mr. Tim Midd. He spots Midd approaching, warns him to keep the alibi quiet — only to learn Midd gave Maggie the identical cover story, and she beat them both. The punch line lands in a silent final panel: a baffled question mark over Jiggs's head. George McManus drew Bringing Up Father from 1913 until his death in 1954, pioneering the recurring domestic-comedy strip whose balloons, gutter pacing, and fixed cast became the structural DNA that early comic-book editors simply reprinted, panel for panel, to fill their new format.