Mutt and Jeff — 1908-04-01

One of the earliest American daily comic strips, *Mutt and Jeff* launched in the *San Francisco Chronicle* in 1907, created by Bud Fisher—the first strip to run six days a week and build a continuous narrative around recurring characters. This strip shows the lanky Mutt recruiting a crowd of dunce-capped 'boobs' for a presidential campaign, likely backing William Jennings Bryan, while a prison warden's lunch bell scatters them. The gag unfolds across eight horizontal panels using confident brushwork, expressive silhouettes, and speech balloons that carry the comic's sharp vaudeville timing. Fisher's innovation—same characters, daily continuity, strip format—directly shaped the page layouts that would, by the 1930s, be reprinted as the first comic books.