Mutt and Jeff — 1909-12-07

Six panels follow the tall, scheming Mutt and his tiny companion Jeff through a New York taxi ride gone wrong. Mutt, playing the man of the world, instructs Jeff never to watch the meter — a mark of low class. Jeff promptly falls asleep; the meter climbs to $14, then $19, then beyond, until both men are ejected onto the street. Fisher's linework is loose and kinetic, the speech balloons clipped and punchy. Mutt and Jeff began in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1907 as the first successful daily comic strip built around recurring characters — establishing the template of paired opposites, serialized gags, and panel-to-panel momentum that would directly shape the format of the comic book itself.