Mutt and Jeff — 1909-12-05

Six horizontal panels follow the lanky Mutt and his short companion Jeff through a New York tenement on Thanksgiving. Mutt gripes about missing dinner while riding the dumbwaiter; Jeff suggests demanding food; the pair crash a family feast, triggering a brawl that ends with bodies flying and a pistol shot. Fisher's draftsmanship is assured — expressive silhouettes, crowded slapstick choreography, speech balloons nested in dense crosshatching. Launched in the *San Francisco Chronicle* in 1907, *Mutt and Jeff* was among the first strips built around a fixed cast in continuous daily episodes, establishing the model — recurring characters, cliffhanger rhythm, consistent visual shorthand — that newspaper syndicates would industrialize and that Depression-era publishers would repackage into the first comic books.