Bringing Up Father — buf390823

George McManus's Bringing Up Father follows Irish immigrant Jiggs and his social-climbing wife Maggie through domestic comedy rendered in McManus's signature elegant linework — lacy curtains, ornate staircases, and crosshatched interiors that give working-class arguments an Art Nouveau grandeur. This three-panel daily shows the couple debating a distinguished name for their son's baby; Jiggs climbs the stairs to consult the man himself, who reveals the name 'Jiggie' — a contest prize honoring Miss Margaret Deutsch of Duluth, Minnesota. McManus, who launched the strip in 1913, helped establish the daily newspaper comic as a narrative form: recurring characters with fixed visual identities, sequential panels advancing plot, and speech balloons carrying comedic rhythm — the structural vocabulary every subsequent comic book inherited.