Buster Brown — 1908-11-22

Outcault's Buster Brown runs eleven panels across four tiers, opening with a splashy title header of costumed figures before settling into a Thanksgiving prank sequence: Buster and his companions drape themselves in sheets to frighten Uncle, release live turkeys through the house, then count down a slapstick ambush that ends with the birds attacking everyone. The strip closes with Buster's signature Resolved moral — here on gratitude and contentment. Outcault had already invented the form with The Yellow Kid (1895); Buster Brown, launched 1902, refined it: consistent cast, expressive speech balloons, numbered panels guiding the eye across a broadsheet page. These Sunday supplements were the direct ancestor of the comic book, training millions of readers in sequential visual narrative before the pamphlet format existed.