Bringing Up Father — buf391010

Three panels follow Jiggs and Maggie's hotel standoff at Yellowstone Park. The clerk has refused their dog; Maggie commandeers the long-distance telephone, name-drops their son-in-law Lord Worthnotten, and bullies the manager into compliance. The punchline lands in the final panel: the manager relented not from social pressure but because he once heard Maggie sing at a friend's house. George McManus, who signed this daily, launched Bringing Up Father in 1913 for King Features Syndicate. Its recurring cast, continuous domestic narrative, and precisely lettered speech balloons made it a direct ancestor of the comic book format — syndicatedstrip reprints, collected as giveaways and newsstand pamphlets through the 1930s, were among the first objects American readers called 'comic books.'