Mutt and Jeff — "Mutt Thought He Had Napoleon's Chapeau"

Six panels follow the lanky Mutt and short Jeff through a Parisian street con: a vendor whispers that he's selling Napoleon's original bicorne for sixty francs; Mutt bites, presents it to Jeff, and both scheme to donate it to the American government — until the final panel reveals Mutt has bought five identical hats, all clearly mass-produced fakes. Bud Fisher's linework is loose and kinetic, the speech balloons conversational, the visual comedy built entirely on timing across panels. Fisher launched *Mutt and Jeff* in the *San Francisco Chronicle* in 1907 — the first successful daily comic strip with a recurring cast — pioneering the sequential grammar of panels, consistent characters, and punchline closure that newspaper syndicates would spread nationwide and that anthology reprints would, within a decade, constitute the first comic books.