Mutt and Jeff — "Nervine for the Nerve"

Six panels follow lanky Mutt and his short companion Jeff through a sidewalk dare: Mutt drinks a bottle of patent medicine called "Nervine," strides boldly into a hat shop, emerges wearing a comically oversized top hat, preens as a "game bird" — then immediately demands the bottle back. Bud Fisher launched *Mutt and Jeff* in the *San Francisco Chronicle* in 1907, making it the first successful daily comic strip built around recurring characters. Fisher's confident linework, expressive silhouettes, and snappy balloon dialogue became a template the whole industry followed. The strip's daily continuity trained readers to return tomorrow — a habit that, gathered into reprint pamphlets, directly seeded the comic book format.