George McManus

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the former Ontario MPP see George McManus (politician)

George McManus (January 23, 1884 – October 22, 1954) is an American cartoonist best known as the creator of the "Maggie and Jiggs" characters in his syndicated comic strip, Bringing up Father.

Born in St. Louis, Missouri with an innate gift for drawing and a sense of humor, it led to his joining the art department of the St. Louis Republic newspaper at the age of sixteen. There, he created his first comic strip but in 1905 he left his hometown to accept a job in New York City with the prestigious New York World newspaper.

At the New York World, McManus worked on a number of different short lived comic strips (including Nibsy the Newsboy, Panhandle Pete, Let George Do It and The Newlyweds) [1] but it was not until he joined the New York Journal American that he gained great success through the creation of the "Bringing up Father" comic strip. His comic strip would be syndicated internationally by King Features Syndicate, and produced by McManus from 1913 until his death after which Vernon Greene took over.

George McManus died in 1954 in Santa Monica, California and was interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York.

In 1995, the strip was one of twenty included in the "Comic Strip Classics" series of commemorative United States postage stamps.