Buster Brown Gets Vaccinated

Outcault's mischievous rich-boy Buster, his dog Tige, and a blackboard-chalked moral in the final panel: the full machinery of the Sunday page is running at full speed here. Eight panels track Buster arriving late to school after contact with a smallpox case, a doctor being summoned, a chaotic vaccination scene, and Buster's revenge — he vaccinates the doctor back. Outcault, who had already invented the Yellow Kid, refined the recurring-character strip into a weekly brand: consistent cast, panel-to-panel continuity, speech balloons handling both dialogue and interior monologue, and a closing 'Resolved!!!' sermon Buster always undercuts. These syndicated Sunday pages, reproduced and bundled, were the direct material ancestor of the comic book format.