Mutt and Jeff — 1909-10-20

Bud Fisher's Mutt and Jeff — the first successful daily newspaper comic strip — here invades New York municipal politics. Six panels introduce a rogues' gallery of caricatured ward-heelers: the tall, mustachioed Mutt (a racetrack hustler), the tiny top-hatted Jeff, Judge Gander, and Senator McGoose Neck, all tangled in accusations of bribery over a mayoral race. A cameo by Happy Hooligan broadens the cross-strip universe Fisher was already exploiting. Fisher pioneered the recurring-character daily strip in 1907 in the *San Francisco Chronicle*, establishing the horizontal panel sequence, integrated speech balloons, and comedy-team dynamic — the direct structural ancestor of the comic book page that would coalesce three decades later.