[1] It depicts the McGinis family, Aloysius, Clarice, their daughter Julie, and their housekeeper Bella Donna, who struggle to "keep up" with the lifestyle of their neighbors, the unseen Joneses.

The comic coined the well-known catchphrase "keeping up with the Joneses",[2] referring to people's tendency to judge their own social standing according to that of their neighbors.

[3][4][5] Use of the Jones name for neighbors involved in social competition predates Momand; William Safire traces an early example in the English writer E. J. Simmons' 1879 Memoirs of a Station Master.

[3] Some etymologists suggest this originates in reference to the family of Edith Wharton (née Jones), prominent socialites in 19th-century New York.

[6] On the Sunday page, Keeping Up with the Joneses had a topper strip, Holly of Hollywood, which ran from January 3, 1932, to March 27, 1938.