Buster Brown — 1903-10-04

Nine panels follow Buster Brown — the round-faced, velvet-suited boy with his dog Tige — as he dons girl's clothes to "amuse Florence," a visitor his mother has brought over. The gag escalates panel by panel: Buster cuts Florence's hair to match his ribbon, scandalizing their mothers, then delivers his signature closing moral, this one riffing on Herbert Spencer and Drummond. Outcault, who had already invented the Yellow Kid, gave Buster crisp cross-hatched linework, expressive silhouettes, and fluid balloon placement that set the standard for Sunday color pages. Those full-page newspaper supplements — printed in bulk, cut, and collected — were the direct ancestor of the comic book as a format.