Mutt and Jeff — 1909-11-11

Bud Fisher's *Mutt and Jeff* was the first successful daily comic strip with a fixed cast, running from 1907 onward and establishing the template every newspaper strip would follow. This strip shows Mutt, the lanky racetrack schemer, reconciling with an estranged woman—presenting her his winnings of $268—only to filch the roll of bills back from under her pillow once her back is turned, landing predictably in a hospital bed. Fisher's panels flow left to right with crisp ink line, economical backgrounds, and speech balloons carrying all narrative weight. No caption boxes needed. That confidence—recurring characters, wordless sight gags closing the sequence, consistent visual rhythm across seven panels—is precisely the grammar that daily strips bequeathed to comic books two decades later.