Buster Brown — 1906-12-23

A Christmas-themed Sunday page in which young Buster stuffs pillows under his father's blanket to impersonate Santa Claus, climbs into the gift sack, and triggers a chaotic bedroom confrontation when Pop arrives. His dog Tige functions as straight-man witness throughout. Outcault arranges nine panels with confident economy — speech balloons nested inside ruled borders, sequential action building to a physical punchline, and a closing 'Resolved' moral panel that became Buster's signature. Outcault had already invented the modern newspaper comic strip with *The Yellow Kid* (1895); *Buster Brown*, launched 1902 in the New York Herald, refined the recurring-character Sunday page into the direct ancestor of the comic book format that would crystallize by the 1930s.