Mutt and Jeff — 1908-09-20

Six panels chart a hat dispute: lanky Mutt berates short Jeff for wearing a stovepipe lid, Jeff buys a replacement alpine-style hat on the advice of a hatter, and Mutt promptly kicks it off his head — leaving Jeff bewildered, question marks floating above him. The final panel hints at a betting sub-plot, Fisher's habitual punchline engine. Bud Fisher launched *Mutt and Jeff* in the *San Francisco Chronicle* in 1907, making it the first successful daily comic strip built on recurring characters and a fixed, panel-by-panel visual rhythm. The strip's speech balloons, comedic timing, and mismatched-pair dynamic directly shaped the page architecture that anthology reprint pamphlets — proto-comic books — would standardize within three decades.