Bringing Up Father — buf390104

Four panels follow Jiggs, the nouveau-riche Irish-American patriarch in top hat and checked vest, as he learns his wife Maggie has gone to his office to 'fix it up' as a surprise. Arriving, he finds her mid-renovation — surrounded by frilly curtains, flowers, and bric-a-brac — and recoils with a startled 'EEK.' George McManus's line work is sinuous and elegant: women drawn in Art Nouveau curves, men in rubbery expressionist silhouette, speech balloons shaped to character. Bringing Up Father launched in 1913 and ran for decades, its domestic-conflict formula and consistent cast making it a template for the recurring-character strip that newspaper syndicates would export worldwide — and that anthology reprints would soon package as the first comic books.