Mutt and Jeff — 1908-09-09

Six panels follow the lanky, top-hatted Mutt through New York after winning a two-dollar bet. Spotting a 'Voltaire Palmist' sign, he ducks in for a reading; the turbaned professor studies his palm and declares Tuesday his lucky day — he'll make a lot of money. Mutt bolts without paying the fee, and in the final panel bets one bone each on Voltaire and King James. Bud Fisher launched *Mutt and Jeff* in the *San Francisco Chronicle* in 1907, making it the first successful daily comic strip with a fixed recurring cast — the very format that trained readers in sequential visual narrative, panel-to-panel continuity, and the speech balloon rhythms that would migrate wholesale into comic books thirty years later.