Buster Brown — 1904-12-04

Outcault's mischievous boy Buster, his dog Tige, and the chaos of a "prepared" electric bath for Papa unspool across nine panels in this Sunday page. Buster wires the tub; Papa steps in; sparks and steam fly; Papa vaults out. The final panel delivers Buster's mock-solemn "Resolved" moral, a strip-defining joke at the strip's own expense. Outcault had already invented the modern comics page with The Yellow Kid (1895–98)—speech balloons integrated into image, sequential panels, a recurring cast. Buster Brown refined that grammar: consistent character design, physical comedy timed across the page, and the recurring resolution gag that readers anticipated weekly. These Sunday pages are the direct ancestors of the comic book format codified thirty years later.