Mutt and Jeff

Bud Fisher's Mutt and Jeff strip unfolds across eight slim panels: the towering, scheming Mutt drags his pint-sized companion Jeff to be married on the spot, a minister obliges, five rubles change hands, and the scheme collapses in slapstick chaos — Jeff calling the minister 'Tiny, honey' and a final eruption of shock. Fisher pioneered the daily comic strip in 1907, building Mutt and Jeff into the first strip with a consistent cast of recurring characters appearing six days a week. Its brisk panel-to-panel momentum, integrated speech balloons, and physical-comedy pacing helped establish the visual grammar that newspaper syndicates spread nationwide — the direct ancestor of the comic book format that would crystallize in the 1930s.