Mutt and Jeff — "Jesse James Had Nothing on Him"

Six panels follow the lanky, hapless Mutt as he locks his betting money in a time-lock safe to resist the races, only to encounter a man named Dorante outside whose mere presence makes him desperate to get it back. The gag hinges on compulsive gambling defeating its own cure; the final panel drops an asbestos curtain over the inevitable outcome. Bud Fisher launched A. Mutt in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1907—the first successful daily comic strip built around a single recurring cast—pioneering the horizontal newspaper-strip format, consistent character design, and speech balloons as primary narrative engine. These syndicated dailies were the direct precursor to the comic book: when publishers collected such strips into pamphlets in the 1930s, the medium was born.