Mutt and Jeff — 1908-04-10

This multi-panel daily strip, headlined *The General and Jeffries Slip Away from Booby Hatch and Pay Mutt a Visit*, follows the lanky, scheming Mutt and his short companion Jeff as they escape a mental institution and pitch an elaborate welcoming-fleet scheme to Mutt, who promptly dismisses them. Bud Fisher's strip, launched in the *San Francisco Chronicle* in 1907, was among the first comic strips built around recurring characters in sequential daily installments — a crucial structural leap toward what would become the comic book. Fisher's loose brushwork, expressive silhouettes, and stacked speech balloons demonstrate the visual grammar being invented in real time: panel-to-panel causality, character-driven comedy, and the running joke as narrative engine.