Bringing Up Father — buf411012f

George McManus's Bringing Up Father — running from 1913 to 2000 — follows Irish immigrant-turned-millionaire Jiggs and his social-climbing wife Maggie. This Sunday page turns on a classic confidence-scheme gag: Jiggs orchestrates a flash-mob of cronies to flood a failing cigar store, manufacture the appearance of booming business, and fool a prospective buyer. McManus draws the chaos in his signature style — elegantly inked figures, precise crosshatching, and Art Nouveau flourishes borrowed from his vaudeville-poster training. The panel sequence — establishing dialogue, street exterior, mob interior, pandemonium, comic aftermath — demonstrates the visual grammar newspaper strips codified before comic books existed. Along with Mutt and Jeff and Krazy Kat, Bringing Up Father proved that recurring characters sustained across daily panels could carry a narrative universe entirely their own.