Bringing Up Father (original comic paste-up)

George McManus

This four panel drawing by George McManus for the daily comic strip Bringing up Father (Jiggs and Maggie), and was published in 1944. From its start in 1913 "Bringing up Father" established a rapidly growing audience, and it would become the most popular output of McManus' lengthy and varied career, with Jiggs and Maggie becoming beloved symbols of the Irish American immigrant family and the American family on the whole. It would later become a part of the MGM film canon when a series of movies based on the strip was released in the 1920s through the '50s.

McManus' most well known comic, featuring Jiggs, a working-class Irish immigrant and his family who've become the recipients of the Irish Sweepstakes, finding themselves suddenly plunged into the glittering world of pre-stock market-crash wealth. A regular, blue collar, immigrant family in America bumbling their way through rich society proved to be appealing to readers, and Bringing Up Father would become one of the most successful comic strips of the 20th century.

American cartoonist George McManus was born on January 23, 1884 in St. Louis, Missouri to Irish immigrant parents. His interest in art began at an early age, and his precocious talent became a point of distraction for him in high school. When a teacher sent him home early with a doodle he'd drawn on his school work - to show his parents as a form of punishment - McManus' father immediately took the drawing to The Republican newspaper editor and got McManus a job as an errand boy and assistant.

In the early 1910s his first comic, "Alma and Oliver," was published in The Republican. A lucky break, winning $3,000 at the racetrack, allowed him to relocate to New York in 1904, where he found work with the New York World newspaper. He tested several comics before developing the first American family strip, "The Newlyweds," whose popularity soon caught the attention of The New York American newspaper.

It was here that, in 1913, he would develop "Bringing Up Father," about an Irish immigrant worker, Jiggs, and his wife Maggie. It would prove to be one of the most successful comics of the 20th century. It was picked up by King Features Syndicate and McManus would produce the comic until his death, when it was taken over by Vernon Green and Frank Fletcher. "Bringing Up Father" would be turned into several movies, including four in which McManus starred. Versions of the comic as well as different comics done in a closely related style were published in Belgium, and Jiggs would be used as an insignia for the U.S. the Air Force's 11th Bomb Squadron in both World Wars (and with whom McManus served in World War I).

George McManus is considered one of the most widely influential comic artists in history, with admirers in the U.S., Europe, China, Indonesia, Argentina, and elsewhere. Among those who credit his work as an inspiration are Al Capp, E.C. Segar, Walt Disney, Hergé, Harvey Kurtzman, Ye Qianyu, and Kho Wang Gie, among numerous others. He is also credited with inspiring Winsor McKay to take up animation.

George McManus died on October 22, 1954, in Santa Monica, CA.