Bringing Up Father — buf390927

Three horizontal panels set in Yosemite: a stout, checkered-suited man and a companion in a wide-brimmed hat discuss building houses in the park to cure loneliness, then propose a stroll — whereupon the suited figure tumbles dramatically from a rocky ledge, emerging rumpled but game, top hat askew, cane in hand. George McManus launched Bringing Up Father in 1913, following Irish-immigrant social climber Jiggs and his status-hungry wife Maggie. By 1939 it ran in hundreds of papers worldwide. McManus's draftsmanship — sinuous Art Nouveau linework, confident brushed blacks, expressive silhouettes — set a visual standard that daily newspaper strips, not comic books, first established: recurring cast, sequential panels, speech balloons as storytelling architecture. The daily strip is the grammar comic books inherited.