Bud Fisher

Bud Fisher was born Harry Conway Fisher on April 3, 1885, in Chicago, Illinois, and died on September 7, 1954. He is best known as the creator of *Mutt and Jeff*, widely recognized as the first successful daily comic strip in the United States. Fisher began his career as a sports cartoonist, and his early strip *A. Mutt*—which introduced the lanky, scheming gambler Augustus Mutt—debuted in 1907. The strip gained a new dynamic when Fisher paired Mutt with the short, bald, and excitable Jeff, and the renamed *Mutt and Jeff* became a nationwide sensation. Fisher’s style was clean and direct, built around expressive, rubbery character designs and sharp vaudeville-style humor. He wrote, drew, and lettered the strip for decades, with his work appearing in *The Saturday Evening Post* and numerous comic books. Over the course of his career, Fisher was credited on 31 issues, with most of his output concentrated in *Mutt & Jeff* titles and joke books. While the strip was eventually continued by other artists, Fisher’s creation remains a landmark in comic strip history. He received no major lifetime awards, but his influence on the daily comic format is enduring.