Mutt and Jeff

Bud Fisher's Mutt and Jeff began as a daily strip in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1907, making it among the first American comics to run six days a week with a continuous cast — a structural leap that pointed directly toward the comic book. This strip shows the tall, scheming Mutt and small, hapless Jeff working a street hustle: Mutt coaches Jeff to demand change from a large man and yell "Ready!" as a signal, whereupon Mutt will rush in and slug the mark from behind. The plan backfires spectacularly across six panels of loose, kinetic brushwork, with Jeff flattened and Mutt's two companions calmly betting on the outcome. Fisher's confident use of sequential timing, recurring characters, and integrated speech balloons helped codify the visual grammar every subsequent cartoonist inherited.