Our New Cartoons — Mutt and Jeff

1914

With this issue, The Citizen begins the publication of the famous "Mutt and Jeff" cartoons, and unless prevented by their delay in the mails, they will appear regularly in the future. This is one of the innovations that have been planned by this newspaper for some time to increase its worth to the reading public.

There is no series of comic cartoons now being made that is more expensive to the publisher than those of Mutt and Jeff. Throughout all the world it is believed that there is not another cartoonist as popular as Bud Fisher, and his characters of Mutt and Jeff are enjoyed by people of all ages throughout all parts of the United States. There is now not a city of importance in the country in which the Mutt and Jeff series is not being published.

In this connection it might be well to review the events that led up to the popularity of the Fisher cartoons.

Bud Fisher is a native of California, and is still a young man. His first newspaper work was on the San Francisco Chronicle, where he began as an ordinary member of the art staff. There he soon showed signs of ability to draw cartoons, and was given the opportunity to draw pictures for the sporting page. It was then that Mutt was originated. The character of Mutt at that time was that of a race track tout, who would sacrifice anything for money with which to bet on the races. The comic efforts of the character took popular fancy at once. The Hearst papers, which are ever on the lookout for something good, saw in Bud Fisher a promising cartoonist, and he was offered a good salary to quit the Chronicle and work for the San Francisco Examiner.

It was not long after that that a campaign was started by Francis J. Heney and Detective William J. Burns against Abe Reuf and the other political grafters of San Francisco, and although Fisher still retained Mutt as one of his characters, he took up the work of drawing cartoons of the graft investigation.

Heney objected to being cartooned and tried in every way to discredit the Examiner for allowing Fisher to draw pictures of him that held him up to ridicule, but to no avail. Less than a year ago, Bud Fisher in an interview declared that Heney had more to do with his success as a cartoonist than any other man, for the objections made by Heney to his pictures only served to advertise them.

At one time when the races were not being run in San Francisco, Mutt, according to the series of cartoons, went insane and was sent to the asylum. There he became acquainted with little Jeff, who has since been his partner in the series of comics.

Fisher is now working at the Hearst headquarters in New York, which is the place from which the Mutt and Jeff cartoons are being distributed throughout the land.

—The Alaska Citizen, Fairbanks, March 16, 1914.