Mutt and Jeff — 1908-04-13

This single-tier strip — printed here as a novelty broadside rather than the usual comic-page format — lampoons a fictional "Prosecution Club" dinner, casting its legal characters in vaudeville turns: a portly prosecutor bellowing a song, a detective forced into an encore, a juggling judge balancing bowls on his chin, and a hapless pianist. Speech balloons crowd each panel with overlapping punchlines, the figures drawn in the loose, ink-economical line that became the house style of early newspaper comics. *Mutt and Jeff*, launched by Bud Fisher in the *San Francisco Chronicle* in 1907, was among the first strips with a consistent cast appearing daily — a key step in establishing the recurring-character serial that would eventually migrate, panel grids intact, into the comic book format of the 1930s.