Bringing Up Father — buf390718

Four daily panels follow Maggie, the socially ambitious wife of Irish-immigrant-made-good Jiggs, as she cradles an infant and trades gossip with a neighbor about a daughter's marriage — her husband, Jiggs, being labeled 'a brute' — while the baby's wailing interrupts the visit and earns Maggie's sharp rebuke. George McManus launched Bringing Up Father in 1913 for King Features Syndicate, running it until his death in 1954. McManus's draftsmanship — Art Nouveau furniture, immaculate crosshatching, expressive silhouettes — set a visual standard for domestic comedy strips. Strips like this one were the direct raw material of the first comic books, which were simply reprinted newspaper pages folded into pamphlet format before original content emerged in the late 1930s.