Buster Brown — 1904-07-03

Eight panels follow Buster Brown's Fourth of July scheme: he wraps firecrackers as a gift for Delia the maid, the box explodes, chaos erupts across three successive panels, and the final row shows Buster receiving the inevitable spanking while his dog Tige looks on. Outcault draws in confident ink line with expressive figures mid-tumble, speech balloons threading dialogue through the action. The strip's resolution panel — Buster's straight-faced moral confession — was Outcault's signature device. Outcault had already invented the modern comic strip with *The Yellow Kid* (1895); *Buster Brown*, launched 1902 in the *New York Herald*, refined the form: recurring cast, consistent page design, weekly gag-with-moral structure. These Sunday pages are the direct ancestors of the comic book format.