Mutt and Jeff — c. 1910

Six panels follow the lanky schemer Mutt and his squat companion Jeff through a Monte Carlo con: Mutt proposes climbing a chimney to reach a roulette wheel, persuades a reluctant Jeff to dangle him on a rope, then loses his nerve mid-drop — ending in comic chaos as casino onlookers scatter. Bud Fisher launched Mutt and Jeff in 1907 as a racing-tip gag in the San Francisco Chronicle, making it among the first strips built around a fixed cast appearing daily. Its horizontal panel grid, speech balloons carrying distinct character voices, and week-to-week continuity gags codified conventions that would migrate directly into the comic-book format thirty years later — the strip as prototype, page by page.