Mutt and Jeff — 1909-10-15

Six panels trace a familiar Mutt and Jeff setup: the lanky, fast-talking Mutt intercepts the squat Jeff just as he is about to marry, keeps the bride occupied by guarding her purse, then pockets the seven dollars inside and talks his way into a shared meal — foiling the wedding a second time. Fisher's line work is economical: thick outlines, polka-dot dress as visual shorthand for the fiancée, speech balloons driving all the comedy. Launched in the *San Francisco Chronicle* in 1907, *Mutt and Jeff* was among the first strips to feature a single cast in daily continuity, establishing the recurring-character daily strip as a commercial form and proving that sequential panels with integrated dialogue could sustain narrative across weeks — a direct ancestor of the comic book format.