Mutt and Jeff — c. 1909

Bud Fisher's *Mutt and Jeff* ran as a daily strip in the San Francisco Chronicle from 1907—the first American comic to appear six days a week in a fixed spot, making it a direct ancestor of the modern comic book. This Sunday-style page casts the lanky, scheming Mutt as a political villain in a mock theatrical bill, with Judge Gander as his hapless victim. Four panels walk through a daylight robbery, a golf-ball assault, a baseball diamond gag, and a final confrontation, all driven by Fisher's loose, rubbery line and crowded speech balloons. The fake theater-playbill framing—critics' blurbs, scene titles—was Fisher's own invention, showing how early strip artists were already folding advertising vernacular and vaudeville structure into sequential storytelling.