Mutt and Jeff

Bud Fisher's Mutt and Jeff — the first successful daily comic strip to run six days a week — follows the mismatched pair through a horse-racing scheme here: tall, scheming Mutt intercepts $13 Jeff has been sent to bet on Firestone and quietly redirects it to a long-shot named Nimbus. Seven slim panels carry the gag through footpath dialogue, a glimpse of the actual race, and Jeff's satisfied ignorance as Nimbus wins. Fisher's line is economical: top-hatted silhouettes, expressive stride, speech balloons that do real narrative work. Launched in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1907, the strip pioneered the recurring-character daily serial that would directly seed the comic-book format anthologists later packaged from newspaper pages.