Mutt and Jeff — 1909-10-10

Seven horizontal panels follow Mutt reading racing-form tips before the lanky schemer literally bumps into a strutting stranger named Sir Wooster — whom he immediately pegs as a steeplechase prospect. Physical comedy escalates through shoulder-checks and star-burst collision lines until Mutt, after a swift hustle, pockets ten bolivars on the horse. Bud Fisher launched *A. Mutt* in the *San Francisco Chronicle* in 1907, making it among the first daily newspaper strips to run six days a week with a continuous cast. The recurring duo — tall, conniving Mutt and tiny Jeff — gave American readers characters whose fates carried over strip to strip, pioneering the serialized comic format whose page layouts, speech balloons, and panel gutters directly shaped the comic book that followed two decades later.