![]() ![]() ![]() [Mutt and Jeff by Bud Fisher, circa 1912. I think Clarity is one of the great strengths of this strip. Having the two main characters that have exact opposite basic features guarantees that there will never be a confusion as to who is who. As far as character design goes, it’s also a really smart move. Other entertainers of the time may have caught on to that idea and incorporated this into their act, but I don’t think audience members do or have ever thought “Oh like Mutt and Jeff” while seeing Laurel and Hardy. There is a visceral level of humor in seeing these two images collide it’s a subconscious tension that is created when this sort of thing happens. I do believe it’s true that the strip might have inspired some similar vaudeville acts, but I think it’s worth noting that there is something inherently humorous about juxtaposing a tall, skinny character with a short, fat character. Jeff was a stout character while Mutt was a tall and gangly character, many have said that this duo created a genre of slapstick and vaudeville acts. In March of 1908, the character “Jeff” was introduced. The humor comes from familiarity and comfort with the strip, that isn’t to say that the strip could have lasted nearly as long as it did without introducing new conflict. I think the humor of the strip really derives from observing a character do exactly what has become expected of them to do. He would then have to go home and apologize to his brutish wife. Mutt would go to the racetrack and have a hunch for a certain horse, he would bet an enormous amount of money on the race, and then more than likely loose it all. Mutt was almost entirely the same joke week after week. The gesture for this panel was almost always the same, all four limbs would be sprawled out, the feet wouldn’t be touching the ground, this created a radial design around the character that really expressed movement and excitement very well.īud Fisher’s strip was featured as a daily in the sports section of The San Francisco Chronicle being that Mutt and Jeff was one of the earliest comic strips, there wasn’t a comics section in any newspapers at the time. ![]() Another common final panel for the strip would be Mutt rushing to a bookie window. A very common composition was a broken window with Mutt’s feet jutting out of the window frame. The characters were mostly drawn in profile with an occasional three quarters view of a character’s face. Some of the more common tropes in a Mutt and Jeff strip include the classic “plotz” as well as characters who had their wrists bent back in such a way where their fingers jutted out to create this feather aesthetic in the hands. Most of the strips followed a strict formula and featured several key tropes. Mutt the original focus of the strip was on horse racing and gambling. It is also worth noting that Mutt & Jeff was originally titled A. Piker Clerk by Clare Briggs, which ran in the Chicago American in 1903, four years before Bud Fisher’s first strip was ever published. It is often cited as being the “first comic strip” but many have brought up the notion that Bud Fisher may have gotten the idea from a daily strip called A. Mutt and Jeff by Bud Fisher was one of the earliest successful daily comic strips. Enjoy!Īll illustrations and captions in this particular post were incorporated into the original essay, along with captions or comments in brackets, by the Survey I instructor Stephen Bissette, to enhance this public post, as were the author info and “further reading” notes after the essay and author’s footnotes. That said, it is all of high caliber, or we would not be sharing it with you here. This is work assigned in class with a tight deadline, completed while juggling many other class assignments. These were class assignments, and should be enjoyed in that context these are not necessarily indicative of the work the individual artists/writers would do in paid professional venues. They are posted here in approximate chronological order of when their chosen subjects-comic strips-were either first published, or in their heyday. Note: This is the fifth in a series of essays written by the current Class of 2012 for Survey of the Drawn Story I, CCS’s comics history class.
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