Mutt and Jeff — 1909-11-19

Six horizontal panels follow the lanky, top-hatted Mutt and his short companion Jeff through a New York employment hustle. Mutt, fresh from the racetrack, lands a waiter's job at a restaurant; Jeff appears as head waiter; a wealthy diner orders an absurdly extravagant meal; the strip ends with the diner face-first in his soup bowl and a terse Good Night! Bud Fisher's linework is spare and kinetic, speech balloons driving every beat of the gag. *Mutt and Jeff*, launched in the *San Francisco Chronicle* in 1907, was among the first strips built around a recurring cast in daily continuity — the very format that taught readers how to follow panels left to right, characters strip to strip, establishing the visual grammar that newspaper comics handed wholesale to the comic book.