Buster Bill, the Park Row Cut-Up

This Puck magazine cover by Udo Keppler satirizes William Randolph Hearst through the popular Buster Brown character—a mischievous boy who regularly appeared in newspaper comics. Here, Hearst-as-Buster attempts to paint the Democratic donkey yellow, a direct jab at his sensationalist "yellow journalism." The image exemplifies how early comic characters transcended their strips to become cultural shorthand for contemporary figures and ideas. Recurring characters like Buster Brown, with their distinctive visual identity and predictable yet flexible scenarios, became the prototype for modern comic narratives. Sunday newspaper pages like these were the laboratory where artists developed sequential storytelling—panel layouts, exaggerated expressions, and visual humor—that would define the emerging medium.