Mutt and Jeff

This strip follows the mismatched duo through a chain of sight gags: the lanky Mutt introduces his diminutive pal Jeff to a pompous 'General,' who proceeds to put Jeff through increasingly absurd physical trials — a strength test, a chair-balancing ordeal, and finally a mechanical contraption that sends the little man flying. Six horizontal panels carry the action left to right, each bound by ruled borders, speech balloons driving dialogue and reaction. Bud Fisher's *Mutt and Jeff* launched in the *San Francisco Chronicle* in 1907 as the first successful six-days-a-week comic strip, introducing the recurring cast and escalating-gag structure that became the daily newspaper comic's template — and, when strips were reprinted in collected pamphlet form, the direct ancestor of the comic book itself.