Mutt and Jeff — 1909-11-24

Six panels follow the tall, lanky Mutt and his short companion Jeff as they test a patent tonic called "Nervine" on Mutt's dog, claiming it will make the animal whip a lion. The dog instead goes berserk, careening into a bystander who punches Mutt into a spinning daze — rendered as a tight spiral of concentric rings. Fisher's linework is confident and kinetic; the chase panel uses motion streaks, and speech balloons carry overlapping insults. *Mutt and Jeff*, launched in the *San Francisco Chronicle* in 1907, was among the first strips to feature a recurring cast across daily installments — a structural innovation that helped transform the newspaper comic page from single-gag illustrations into serialized narrative, the direct ancestor of the collected comic book.