Here’s a Mutt and Jeff comic strip from 1913 drawn by the original creator, Bud Fisher who drew it from 1907 to 1932, which at that time it was taken over by cartoonist Al Smith. Here we have Mutt (Jeff is not in this one) applying for a job as a motorcycle cop. What I like about it is that he shows up decked out in his modern 1913 motorcycle gear, goggles and all. What’s he got wrapped around his legs?

Check out the ‘double-take’ that the cop makes. Visual devices like this are common to cartoon language these days but that’s pretty innovative stuff for 1913. The dotted line from the cop indicates his gaze (or is it Mutt’s) and then the question mark indicates his confoundedness. It kind of looks like Mutt shot a question mark out of his eyes and it bounced off of the cop’s head. Hehe. And those are some serious motion lines in the last panel.

– Click to enlarge.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 16th, 2007 at 12:18 pm and is filed under Comics History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.