Mutt and Jeff — "He Tries the Close-to-Nature Stunt"

Bud Fisher's *Mutt and Jeff* ran as a daily strip from 1907, making it among the first American comics built around a fixed cast returning every day — a structural invention as consequential as the speech balloon itself. This strip follows the tall, scheming Mutt and his small, credulous companion Jeff through six panels: Mutt is prescribed outdoor living by a doctor, tries sleeping in the park, is driven off by ants, then retreats to fix a horse race by bribing jockey, owner, and starter — only to be kicked airborne when the scheme collapses. Fisher's loose brushwork, economical staging, and single running joke per strip established the template that daily comic pages, and eventually comic books, would inherit wholesale.