Bringing Up Father — buf391107

Four panels follow Jiggs, the nouveaux-riche Irish-American bricklayer, as his son-in-law escorts him through Topeka's nightlife. A conspiratorial conversation at a bar leads the pair through silhouetted streets to an increasingly rowdy club, climaxing with Jiggs airborne—launched, presumably, by his furious wife Maggie—while a bystander pleads she telephone their son-in-law at 2 a.m. George McManus launched Bringing Up Father in 1913, running it for decades across King Features syndication. His fluid Art Nouveau linework, architecturally detailed crowd scenes, and crisp balloon lettering set draftsmanship benchmarks that influenced a generation of cartoonists. The daily strip format McManus perfected—recurring cast, escalating situation, physical-comedy payoff—directly shaped the anthology reprints that became the first true comic books in the early 1930s.