Who were Mutt and Jeff?
Mutt and Jeff is an American newspaper comic strip that ran from November 15, 1907 to 1982. It was created by Bud Fisher, though for most of its run (1932-1980), it was taken over by a former assistant, cartoonist Al Smith, when Fisher retired, shortly before his death. While not the first daily comic strip, it was the first successful one and is credited with establishing the format of a six-day-a-week strip with a regular set of characters. It was also among the last strips to feature a daily title for each strip, usually a humorous aside on the day’s punchline. The strip was originally titled A. Mutt and appeared on the sports pages of the San Francisco Chronicle. Augustus Mutt was a tall, rangy racetrack character, but the strip was transformed when Mutt encountered the half-pint Jeff (an inmate of an insane asylum) on March 27, 1908. On June 7, 1908, the strip moved off the sports pages and into the Hearst-owned San Francisco Examiner where it was syndicated and became a national
