Mutt and Jeff — 1908-04-07

This early *Mutt and Jeff* page runs across a full broadsheet column in multi-panel sequence, following the lanky, top-hatted Mutt and the round, bald Jeff through a courtroom-adjacent comic predicament — Mutt granted temporary release from an asylum to defend his son in a legal farce called the 'Cicero Trial.' Speech balloons carry rapid-fire dialogue; a mock classified ad panel at left parodies newspaper conventions. Bud Fisher launched *A. Mutt* in the *San Francisco Chronicle* in November 1907, making it among the first *daily* comic strips with a recurring cast — a structural breakthrough. Where Sunday pages by Outcault and McCay had pioneered color and page-scale fantasy, Fisher's daily strip proved the form could sustain continuous narrative momentum, directly prefiguring the anthology format that became the comic book.