The Fabuleous Fifties

Shit My Father Does

Story Strip Day.

Since I vowed to show more cartoony stuff this week, today's continuity of sorts is from George McManus excellent Bringing Up Father. The strip is rightly praised for it's visuals, but the writing isn't bad either. What surprises me, when I read it, is how many of the jokes are not dependend on puns or witty retorts. The length of the strip gives McManus the room to create some very funny situations for his characters. These are all from the later run of the strip, when McManus was still producing some of his best work.

April 1947:





Jan 1948:



Dec 1948/Jan 1949:



Jan 1950:


May 1950:





Zek Zekley started out as George McManus' assistant pretty early on in the run. It may be assumed that a lot of the intricate detail work in the Sundays of the forties was in fact Zekley's work. Which made it all the more galling that he was not picked to take over the strip by the syndicate after McManus died in the early fifties. Instead the assignment went to Vernon Greene (who didn't do a bad job either). Zekley tried his hand at a strip f his own, whch I will show some of these days. Quite a hidous strip, by the way. A lot like Bringing Up Father, but different in a way that makes it off-putting. How Zekley would have fared with Father is anyone's guess. Anyway, unable to get the strip, he sued the widow of McManus for part of the estate. They settled in 1956, according to this short newspaper notice I found.