Bringing Up Father — buf390202

Four panels follow Jiggs, the hen-pecked Irish-American social climber, as he grumbles about wife Maggie monopolizing the telephone. A visitor arrives claiming he couldn't reach her by phone and came in person to arrange a singing lesson; Maggie, caught out, pivots smoothly. Jiggs dispatches 'Attaboy' to fetch a repairman. The strip's scratchy, confident linework — crowded speech balloons, expressive silhouettes, furniture rendered in quick cross-hatching — is pure George McManus, who launched Bringing Up Father in 1913. Running in hundreds of Hearst papers, it became one of the longest-lived daily strips in history. McManus refined the visual syntax of sequential cartooning — consistent character design across decades, balloon placement driving comic timing — that directly shaped the comic book format emerging in the same decade.