Mutt and Jeff — 1909-11-14

Bud Fisher's *Mutt and Jeff* was the first successful daily comic strip with a recurring cast, launching in the *San Francisco Chronicle* in 1907 and quickly syndicated nationwide. This strip places the lanky, scheming Mutt on a football field standing in for a Harvard fullback. The six panels move crisply: a coach whispers a trick double-pass play, Mutt exults, receives the ball — then a Harvard man tackles him airborne, sending him flipping. The final panel reveals Mutt, crumpled, reading racing odds rather than playing. Fisher's fluid ink line, economical speech balloons, and tight panel-to-panel continuity were already teaching readers how to parse sequential art — habits that would define the comic book form two decades later.