Bringing Up Father — buf400604

Four panels follow Maggie as she telephones to check on their son while she and Jiggs are away. Sitting with her husband in panel one, she decides to call; panels two and three show her navigating an operator or intermediary who tells her the son is too busy to talk; in the final panel she erupts — "Wake him up!" — her figure looming with comic indignation. McManus's line is assured and fluid, the women rendered with elaborate curled hair and polka-dotted dresses, the men squat and rubbery. Bringing Up Father, launched in 1913, was among the first strips to export worldwide, and its recurring domestic sparring between social-climbing Maggie and working-class Jiggs helped establish the recurring-character strip as the backbone of American newspaper comics — the direct seedbed of the comic book form.