Mutt and Jeff — 1910-01-22

Bud Fisher's *Mutt and Jeff* — the gangling, scheming Mutt and his pint-sized straight man Jeff — were already America's first daily comic-strip superstars when this strip ran. Here the mismatched pair cadge their way into a real Duke's hospitality, gorge themselves at his Scottish estate, and exit pursued by a British bobby when the bill arrives. Fisher's six-panel sequence is crisp newspaper craft: economical ink hatching, expressive silhouettes, speech balloons carrying all the comic timing. Launched in the *San Francisco Chronicle* in 1907, *Mutt and Jeff* proved that recurring characters with serialized gags could sell papers daily — a commercial and artistic template that shaped everything from the Sunday funnies to the first newsstand comic books of the 1930s.