Mutt and Jeff

Mutt and Jeff
Overland Monthly ad (January 1916)
Author(s)	Bud Fisher, Al Smith, George Breisacher
Website	www.gocomics.com/muttandjeff/
Current status / schedule	concluded; reruns
Launch date	November 15, 1907
End date	June 26, 1983
Syndicate(s)	King Features Syndicate, Wheeler Syndicate, Bell Syndicate, Field Newspaper Syndicate

Mutt and Jeff is a long-running and widely popular American newspaper comic strip created by cartoonist Bud Fisher in 1907 about "two mismatched tinhorns". Historians regard Mutt and Jeff, originally titled A. Mutt, as the first American newspaper cartoon published as a strip of panels, as opposed to a single panel, making it the first "comic strip" to successfully pioneer that since-common format.

The "Mutt and Jeff" comic strip remained in syndication until 1983, employing the talents of several cartoonists, chiefly Al Smith who drew the strip for nearly fifty years. The series eventually became a comic book, initially published by All-American Publications and later published by DC Comics, Dell Comics and Harvey Comics. Later it was also published as cartoons, films, pop culture merchandise and reprints.

Harry Conway "Bud" Fisher was a sports cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle in the early 1900s, a time when a newspaper cartoon was single panel. His innovation was to tell a cartoon gag in a sequence, or strip, of panels, creating the first American comic strip to successfully pioneer that since-common format. The concept of a newspaper strip featuring recurring characters in multiple panels on a six-day-a-week schedule actually had been created by Clare Briggs with A. Piker Clerk four years earlier, but that short-lived effort did not inspire further comics in a comic-strip format. As comics historian Don Markstein explained,

Fisher's comic strip was very similar to A. Piker Clerk, which cartoonist Clare Briggs ... had done in the very same daily format for The Chicago American in 1903. But tho Fisher was born in Chicago, it's unknown whether or not he ever saw the Briggs strip, so let's give him the benefit of the doubt and say he had an idea. Despite the Briggs primacy, A. Mutt is considered the first daily strip because it's the one that sparked a trend in that direction, which continues to this day.