MUTT AND JEFF TRIAL

In the introduction to Forever Nuts: The Early Years of Mutt & Jeff, Allan Holtz gave the following reason for the strip's longevity and demise: Smith continued to draw Mutt and Jeff until 1980, two years before it ceased publication. Īl Smith received the National Cartoonists Society Humor Comic Strip Award in 1968 for his work on the strip. Mutt and Jeff retained Fisher's signature until his death, however, so it wasn't until December 7, 1954, that the strip started being signed by Smith. 1944, the new Chicago-based Field Syndicate took over the strip. įisher appeared to lose all interest in the strip during the 1930s, and after Mack died in 1932, the job of creating the strip fell to Al Smith. Other assistants on the strip included Ken Kling, George Herriman, and Maurice Sendak (while still in high school). Fisher hired Billy Liverpool and Ed Mack, artists Hearst had at one point groomed to take over the strip, who did most of the artwork. In 1918, Mutt and Jeff added a Sunday strip and, as success continued, Fisher became increasingly dependent on assistants to produce the work. By the 1920s, merchandising and growing circulation had increased his income to an estimated $250,000. By 1916, Fisher was earning in excess of $150,000 a year. Hearst responded by launching a lawsuit which ultimately failed. Fisher had taken the precaution of copyrighting the strip in his own name, facilitating the move to King Features and making it impossible for the Chronicle to continue the strip using another artist.Ī dispute between Fisher and King Features arose in 1913, and Fisher moved his strip on September 15, 1915, to the Wheeler Syndicate (later the Bell Syndicate), who gave Fisher 60% of the gross revenue, an enormous income in those times. On June 7, 1908, the strip moved off the sports pages and into Hearst's San Francisco Examiner where it was syndicated by King Features and became a national hit, subsequently making Fisher the first celebrity of the comics industry.

MUTT AND JEFF TRIAL

A 1908 sequence about Mutt's trial featured a parade of thinly-disguised caricatures of specific San Francisco political figures, many of whom were being prosecuted for graft. Episodes were drawn the day before publication, and frequently referred to local events that were currently making headlines or to specific horse races being run that day.

It appeared only in the Chronicle, so Fisher did not have the extended lead time that syndicated strips require. This strip focused on a single main character until the other half of the duo appeared on March 27, 1908. According to Fisher, Young told him, 'It would take up too much room, and readers are used to reading down the page, and not horizontally'. Young, about doing a regular strip as early as 1905, but was turned down. Fisher had approached his editor, John P. The featured character had previously appeared in sports cartoons by Fisher but was unnamed. Mutt, the comic strip that became better known by its later title, Mutt and Jeff, debuted on Novemon the sports pages of the San Francisco Chronicle. Mutt is considered the first daily strip because it's the one that sparked a trend in that direction, which continues to this day. 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. had done in the very same daily format for The Chicago American in 1903. Piker Clerk, which cartoonist Clare Briggs. As comics historian Don Markstein explained,įisher's comic strip was very similar to A. Piker Clerk four years earlier, but that short-lived effort did not inspire further comics in a comic-strip 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. 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. 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.

6.1 Program from Mutt and Jeff Divorced (1920).

Mutt and jeff