Mutt and Jeff — 1909-11-21

Six panels follow the lanky, top-hatted Mutt as he buys a box seat for the New York Horse Show, then ditches his shorter companion Jeff at a telephone box—reasoning Jeff would look wrong in 'swell society.' Inside Madison Square Garden's ring, Mutt watches the prize winner parade past; the final panel finds him locked up after he apparently impersonated a polo pony. Fisher's brushwork is loose and confident: figures read instantly in silhouette, speech balloons carry the entire comedic load, and the strip's running joke—Mutt's schemes always rebounding on himself—clicks through with clockwork economy. Launched in the *San Francisco Chronicle* in 1907, *Mutt and Jeff* was among the first strips to use a continuous daily narrative and a fixed cast, directly anticipating the collected reprint pamphlets that became the comic book format.