Bringing Up Father — buf390525

Four panels follow Jiggs, the henpecked Irish-American social climber created by George McManus, as he hunts for a baby name. Excited by "Oswald," he plans to tell wife Maggie — only to walk past a sign reading Oswald and Oswald, Garbage Collectors, deflating the idea instantly. A small girl and a dog deliver the punchline. McManus's draftsmanship is unmistakable: Art Nouveau-influenced curling lines, checkerboard waistcoat, stovepipe hat, and expressive silhouette work. Launched in 1913, Bringing Up Father ran in hundreds of Hearst syndicate papers worldwide. Its daily strips and Sunday pages represent the commercial and formal infrastructure from which the comic book directly grew — reprinted strip collections were among the first staple-bound pamphlets sold as "comic books" in the early 1930s.