Bringing Up Father 5/20/33 by Geo McManus

I can't say enough good things about McManus. Easily among my favorite comic strip creators of all time. Bringing Up Father is his best known and longest running strip and one of my all time favorite comic strips perhaps only behind Terry and the Pirates, Gasoline Alley and Calvin and Hobbes. In addition to the great design elements, the deco styling, funny detail he adds (like images in picture frames, not on this example), his ability to draw 100 different characters completely differently, McManus was a genius at animating movement. He was hugely influential and Herge of Tintin fame credits him highly as an influence. So much to love and perhaps the best part is most of his strips are still funny 100 years later while so many of his contemporaries humor might be lost or turned down due to the ages. Not with McManus, Maggie and Jiggs and the rest of the crew make me smile and laugh and I am always looking at them even in others people's collections and at auction when I am not buying. I try not to buy more as I have too many but sometimes I can't help myself.

This one came into my collection for a few reasons. 1933 is still pretty early in the strip, the first 21 year or so. The second is I liked the gag and I see a bit of an homage to Krazy Kat in that last panel. The third is it features Dinty who we hear about all the time in the strip but not sure I knew what he looked like. He owns a restaurant where Jiggs loves to go to get corned beef and cabbage and it is too low class for Maggie and serves as a funny point of contention that is often a secondary joke in his strips. Well, here we see Dinty in all his glory getting beaned by a brick. Of course, back in the 20's and 30's the artists knew each other and McManus was good friends with Winsor McCay and TAD and so I like to image that he also was friends with Geo Herriman.