Mutt and Jeff — 1909-12-07

Six panels follow the tall, scheming Mutt and his tiny companion Jeff through a New York taxi ride gone wrong. Mutt, playing the man of the world, instructs Jeff never to watch the meter — a mark of low class. Jeff promptly falls asleep; the meter climbs to $14, then $19, then beyond, until both men are ejected onto the street. Fisher's linework is loose and kinetic, the speech balloons clipped and punchy. *Mutt and Jeff* began in the *San Francisco Chronicle* in 1907 as the first successful daily comic strip built around recurring characters — establishing the template of paired opposites, serialized gags, and panel-to-panel momentum that would directly shape the format of the comic book itself.