Mutt and Jeff — 1908-04-13

This single-tier strip — printed here as a novelty broadside rather than the usual comic-page format — lampoons a fictional "Prosecution Club" dinner, casting its legal characters in vaudeville turns: a portly prosecutor bellowing a song, a detective forced into an encore, a juggling judge balancing bowls on his chin, and a hapless pianist. Speech balloons crowd each panel with overlapping punchlines, the figures drawn in the loose, ink-economical line that became the house style of early newspaper comics. Mutt and Jeff, launched by Bud Fisher in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1907, was among the first strips with a consistent cast appearing daily — a key step in establishing the recurring-character serial that would eventually migrate, panel grids intact, into the comic book format of the 1930s.