Mutt and Jeff — 1908-08-10

Six panels follow the lanky, hapless Mutt as he tries to quit gambling in New York City. He buries his bankroll three miles from home, treks out to retrieve it, gets tipped on a fixed race by a stranger claiming to know the jockey and the stancer, bets the coin, and loses — ending on his knees while a well-dressed New Yorker notes the split. Fisher's brushwork is loose and energetic; speech balloons carry overlapping dialogue that drives the gag forward panel by panel. *Mutt and Jeff*, launched in the *San Francisco Chronicle* in 1907, is among the first strips built around a single recurring cast, running six days a week — a structural blueprint the nascent comic book would inherit directly.