Mutt and Jeff — 1909-10-12

Six panels trace a breakneck wedding con: the diminutive Jeff, convinced by the lanky Mutt to marry a large woman, exchanges vows at the altar — then bolts when the ring flies off her finger and the deal sours, ending with a pawnbroker valuing the band at six washers. Bud Fisher launched *Mutt and Jeff* in the *San Francisco Chronicle* in 1907, making it the first successful daily comic strip built around recurring characters — a crucial step toward the comic book form. Fisher's confident brushwork, stacked speech balloons, and locked-in panel rhythm codified conventions that cartoonists worldwide would inherit: sequential causality, character-driven comedy, and the strip as self-contained narrative unit.