Mutt & Jeff
By Bud Fisher | 3.5K FollowersAbout Mutt & Jeff
One of the classics, "Mutt & Jeff" started in the San Francisco Chronicle more than 100 years ago. "Mutt & Jeff" has become part of our cultural vocabulary, and the strip continues to attract audiences around the world who appreciate clean, straightforward humor that doesn’t depend on local cultural awareness.
This historic comic is presented in its original form, unedited from the time period in which it was created. These images may contain harmful stereotypes, problematic and antiquated ideologies, or otherwise negative cultural depictions and themes indicative of the context in which it first appeared. We run these vintage comic strips to preserve a digital archive of the medium's early examples.
Meet Bud Fisher
Harry Conway "Bud" Fisher was born in Chicago in 1884.
In his first year of study at the University of Chicago, he left school to take a job at the San Francisco Chronicle, where he drew cartoons and did page layouts for the sports department. His comic strip debuted as "A. Mutt," the story of inept horse race gambler Augustus Mutt, in 1907. The next year, Mutt met the scheming Jeff in an insane asylum, and a partnership was born. In 1915 Fisher made it official by changing the name of the strip to "Mutt & Jeff."
"Mutt & Jeff" became a national hit in syndication and is recognized as the first successful daily comic strip, spinning off into comic books, animated shorts, and merchandise. Fisher became a wealthy celebrity as the world's highest paid cartoonist during the 1920s and lived the high life, buying Rolls-Royces and racehorses, eventually moving to an apartment on New York's Park Avenue.
Following Fisher's death in 1954, Al Smith, Fisher's longtime assistant, continued the strip into the 1980s.