Buster Brown's Bath

Ten panels track Buster Brown's disastrous attempt at an unsupervised bath: his dog Tige watches as the boy turns on the taps, a geyser erupts from the tub flooding the entire bathroom, mother arrives to chaos, and Buster ends the strip tucked in bed resolving *never* to bathe again so long as the Board of Health interferes. Outcault's draughtsmanship is confident—brick walls rendered in crosshatch, water rendered as radiating lines, figures expressive without caricature. Outcault had already invented the modern comic strip with *The Yellow Kid* (1895); *Buster Brown* (debuting 1902) refined it: stable recurring cast, sequential panel grammar, speech balloons integrated into composition. These Sunday pages were the direct ancestors of the comic book format, teaching readers worldwide how to move through sequenced images.