Buster Brown on His Uncle Jack's Farm

Nine panels track Buster Brown's scheme to plant ducks on his uncle's farm — burying them in the ground, basket in hand, while his tiger Tige chases the birds into rows. Predictably the ducks riot, animals stampede, and Buster ends muddied and chased across the yard. The strip closes with Outcault's signature device: Buster's solemn moral resolution, printed in a final text panel. R. F. Outcault had already pioneered the recurring-character Sunday page with The Yellow Kid (1895–98); Buster Brown, launched 1902, refined the formula — stable cast, sequential panels, speech balloons anchored to figures, and a comedic payoff capped by moralizing irony. These Sunday color pages, syndicated nationally, are the direct formal ancestors of the comic book.