Mutt and Jeff — 1908-09-02

Six panels follow the lanky, scheming Mutt and his pint-sized companion Jeff through a New York restaurant blowout and into an automobile joyride, capped by a horse-racing bet. Fisher loads each panel with stacked speech balloons, a boisterous waiter ordering "nine chickens à la king, 72 soups," and a finale where Mutt risks his entire bankroll on Chickasaw. The draftsmanship is loose and kinetic — hatched suits, exaggerated postures, figures that practically bounce off the panel borders. Launched in the *San Francisco Chronicle* in 1907, *Mutt and Jeff* was among the first daily newspaper strips to run a single continuous narrative with recurring characters, pioneering the comedic duo format and the sequential visual grammar — consistent cast, panel-to-panel cause and effect — that would define comic books for the next century.