Mutt and Jeff

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Mutt and Jeff was a comic strip started by Bud Fisher in 1907 under the title A. Mutt . The strip lasted for 75 years, was continued by several cartoonists and was the basis for several hundred film adaptations.

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At first, the comics were about Augustus Mutt, who is passionate about betting on horses and mostly loses. The highlight of the stories was that they were real horses that were supposed to start on the day the respective strip appeared; hence the strip appeared on the sports page of the San Francisco Chronicle . The character of former boxer Jeffrey aka Jeff first appeared on March 27, 1908, when Mutt met him in a madhouse. From 1910 Jeff became an integral part of the comics; from 1916 his name appeared in the title. Initially, the adventures revolved around events on the racecourse, but later the two title heroes went on trips, during which they met Pancho Villa and took part in the First World War . As early as 1908, Mutt's candidacy for the office of US President was unsuccessful.

Draftsman and Publication

Bud Fisher was the inventor and first draftsman . On November 15, 1907, his strip A. Mutt appeared on the sports page of the San Francisco Chronicle for the first time , which was very similar to the strip A. Piker Clerk by Clare Briggs, which had appeared a few years earlier . Fisher was so successful that he was poached by William Randolph Hearst's San Francisco Examiner after just four weeks with his strip . Fisher, who had secured the rights to the Strip early on, later moved to the Wheeler Syndicate, which led to a lawsuit with the Hearst Corporation, as Ed Mack was hired by Hearst to continue drawing Mutt and Jeff . After the end of the legal dispute, which had a positive outcome for Fisher, Mack was hired by Fisher and created a large part of the drawings in the 1920s. Fisher had already started quite early to have his comics drawn by assistants and only to sign them, as he was like his title character liked to go to horse races. In 1914, the draftsman Myer Marcus, alias Billy Liverpool, was hired to relieve Fisher. Another assistant to Fisher was George Herriman, who was still largely unknown at the time . Also unknown was the young Maurice Sendak , who also assisted Fisher in the 1940s.

The draftsman Al Smith was from 1932 ghost draftsman for Fisher and replaced Liverpool and Mack. After Fisher's death in 1954, Smith officially took over the comic strip. He was assisted by Joe Dennett in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1980, George Breisacher took over the strip from Al Smith. Two years later the comic strip was discontinued.

In contrast to many other successful comic strips of the time, A. Mutt or Mutt and Jeff remained without a Sunday page for a long time; the strip only came out six days a week. A Sunday page was not set up until 1918. From 1910 (according to other data from 1911) daily strips published in newspapers were reprinted in book form; With Mutt and Jeff Fisher reaches 23 different volumes.

From 1911 onwards, numerous Mutt and Jeff films were produced, most of them as animated films. In total, over 300 films have been released. The first musicals and stage shows appeared as early as 1910 .

reception

In the 1922 novel Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis , the title character reads Adventures by Mutt and Jeff . Andreas C. Knigge sees Bud Fisher as the one who managed to establish the daily strip with Mutt and Jeff . For Franco Fossati, the reasons for the popularity of the comic lie in the “simple gags and a deliberately paradoxical comedy”. According to Marc Weidenbaum, the attraction of the early strips of the series was that readers could share the thrill of betting with Mutt and bet with or against him, as the horses actually started. Jeff, the second character, gave new life to the series after that original concept wore out. Although Fisher's drawings were "crude and awkward" , the comic was so successful that "mutt'n'jeff" was used as a term for an unequal couple in English.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Mutt and Jeff: On Strike (1920) at filmpreservation.org (English, PDF file) , accessed December 1, 2013
  2. ↑ Marcel Feige: The little comic dictionary . Schwarzkopf and Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-89602-544-9 , p. 562.
  3. ↑ a b Paul Gravett (eds.) And Andreas C. Knigge (transl.): 1001 comics that you should read before life is over . Zurich 2012, Edition Olms. P. 38.
  4. ↑ Mutt and Jeff on lfb.it (Italian) , accessed on December 1, 2013
  5. ↑ a b Andreas C. Knigge: Comics . Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek 1996, ISBN 3-499-16519-8 , p. 35.
  6. ↑ a b Andreas C. Knigge: Comic Lexikon . Ullstein Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin and Vienna 1988, ISBN 3-548-36554-X , p. 197
  7. ↑ a b c Andreas C. Knigge: Comics . Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek 1996, ISBN 3-499-16519-8 , p. 36.
  8. ↑ a b Ed Mack on lambiek.net (English) , accessed on December 1, 2013
  9. ↑ Myer Marcus on lambiek.net (English) , accessed on December 4, 2015
  10. ↑ George Herriman on lambiek.net (English) , accessed on December 1, 2013
  11. ↑ Maurice Sendak on lambiek.net (English) , accessed on December 1, 2013
  12. ↑ a b Al Smith on lambiek.net (English) , accessed on December 1, 2013
  13. ↑ Joe Dennett on lambiek.net (English) , accessed December 1, 2013
  14. ↑ George Breisacher lambiek.net (English) , accessed on December 1, 2013
  15. ^ Andreas C. Knigge: Comics . Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek 1996, ISBN 3-499-16519-8 , p. 37.
  16. ↑ Triumph of the nerds on economist.com (English) , accessed December 1, 2013
  17. ^ Andreas C. Knigge: Comics . Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek 1996, ISBN 3-499-16519-8 , p. 39.
  18. ^ Marc Weidenbaum: Mutt and Jeff. In: Paul Gravett (ed.) And Andreas C. Knigge (transl.): 1001 comics that you should read before life is over . Edition Olms, Zurich 2012, p. 38.
  19. ^ Andreas C. Knigge: Comics . Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek 1996, ISBN 3-499-16519-8 , p. 110.
  20. ^ A b Bud Fisher in the Internet Movie Database , accessed December 1, 2013
  21. ^ Franco Fossati: The large illustrated Ehapa comic lexicon . Ehapa Verlag, Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-7704-0865-9 , p. 183.