Bringing Up Father — buf390626

Three panels follow a large, bald man crouching over a baby on a front stoop. The infant babbles "Goo-ga-da" while the man declares "Rollo" would be a fine name — then coaches the child to say it. In the final panel, a pack of neighborhood dogs comes bounding in, all answering to "Rollo." George McManus launched Bringing Up Father for King Features Syndicate in 1913, running it until his death in 1954. Its clean ink line, architectural panel borders, and expressive balloon lettering helped standardize the visual language American newspaper strips still use. Those syndicated dailies and Sundays, collected into cheap reprint booklets from the 1910s onward, are the direct material ancestor of the comic book format.