Bringing Up Father — buf400330

Four panels, black-and-white daily ink: Jiggs arrives at a Washington judge's office to find a succession of evasive clerks, each disclaiming knowledge of the judge's whereabouts — until the last reveals the golf sticks are missing, meaning the judge has slipped out to play. George McManus launched Bringing Up Father in 1913, making it one of the longest-running strips in American syndication. McManus's clean Art Nouveau line, precise crosshatching, and architectural panel borders influenced a generation of cartoonists. The recurring gag — nouveau-riche Jiggs escaping domestic duty — gave readers a fixed cast and serialized humor, the very formula that newspaper syndicates packaged into reprinted pamphlets during the 1930s, directly seeding the comic-book format.