Mutt and Jeff — "With Mutt in Paris: Jeff Makes a Hit in the Latin Quarter"

Six panels follow the mismatched pair — tall, scheming Mutt and tiny, bowler-hatted Jeff — into a rough Parisian café. Mutt coaches Jeff to shout a crowd-pleasing phrase; Jeff botches it, bellowing "Vive l'Empereur!" instead of the republican toast, triggering a brawl that ends with both men fleeing through a hail of boots and bottles. Bud Fisher launched *Mutt and Jeff* in the *San Francisco Chronicle* in 1907, making it the first successful daily comic strip with recurring characters — a direct ancestor of the comic book form. Fisher's confident brushwork, overlapping crowd figures, and speech balloons carrying the entire comedic load show the visual grammar of sequential art already fully formed.