Mutt and Jeff — 1909-12-09

Bud Fisher's *Mutt and Jeff* strip here follows the lanky Mutt shepherding his brother Ima through New York City. Ima, volatile beneath a placid exterior, counts to ten to suppress his temper — a running gag that collapses in the final panel when someone shoves him and he ends up seeing stars. Fisher's draftsmanship is loose and kinetic: figures crowd the gutters, speech balloons carry punchy vernacular, and the punchline lands in a wordless pratfall. Launched in the *San Francisco Chronicle* in 1907, *Mutt and Jeff* was among the first strips to sustain a daily narrative across episodes, helping establish the recurring-character serial as the defining engine of American comics — the direct ancestor of the comic book format itself.