And I lost $5 on A. Piker Clerk! I guess I shouldn't have trusted something that ran for a year and then was pulled. Bud Fisher's Mutt and Jeff is widely, if incorrectly, considered the first newspaper comic strip that was printed daily. Debuting in 1907 in the San Francisco Chronicle, the strip was originally titled A. Mutt. The strip's namesake, Augustus Mutt, was a tall tinhorn man who, much like Piker Clerk from the earlier comic, would bet on horse races one day, with the next strip showing A. Mutt's reaction depending on whether he won or lost. He would then make yet another bet.
The comic strip probably wouldn't have lasted too much longer if not for the arrival of Jeff... A much shorter man that Mutt met in a mental institution in 1908. The name of the strip changed to Mutt and Jeff shortly thereafter and the rest is history. The strip continued to be run until 1982.
It should be noted that this is another example of a comic strip lending a word or phrase to the English language. The phrase "Mutt and Jeff" came into existence to describe a pair of people, one tall, one short.
