Louis World's Fair, where he sold up to 200 licenses to the Buster Brown image, Runberg-Smith says. He was drawn to be marketed, says Kris Runberg-Smith, the archivist for the collection of Buster Brown memorabilia at the Brown Shoe Co. In the bottom right corner, the Buster Brown comic would always end with what was called a 'resolved' panel (in which) Buster would say, 'I'm sorry I was bad, I promise never to do that again, I'll be a good boy from now on.' And of course that went over great with the parents.'īuster Brown's appeal was obvious. Or doing things that weren't quite as dangerous as what the Yellow Kid did. Olson explains: 'He got into trouble by putting syrup in his mother's perfume bottle. Like the Yellow Kid, Buster Brown also got into trouble every Sunday, but it was a 'nicer grade of trouble,' says Richard Olson, a historian and Outcault expert. Moms found the Kid too vulgar and the strip eventually died.Ī few years later, Outcault introduced Buster Brown, who was loosely based on a boy near his home in Flushing, N.Y. He was used to advertise cigarettes, tobacco and beer. The Yellow Kid was always getting into trouble with his rascally friends in the slums of New York. Outcault's first popular character was the Yellow Kid, who was so popular that the two New York newspapers that carried that strip were called 'the yellow papers.' The term 'yellow journalism' was coined after the papers' sensational reporting during the Spanish-American War. His family was rich, which appealed to upper class New Yorkers.'īuster Brown's creator was Richard Outcault, a pioneer of the comic strip as a form of art and social commentary. 'In almost every strip, Buster Brown wore short pants, a little jacket, and dainty Victorian shoes and sometimes a wide, saucer-rimmed hat. adopted them as mascots.Īs NPR's Elizabeth Blair reports on Morning Edition, Buster Brown was the perfect character for the turn of the last century, the genteel age. The pair soon appeared in newspapers around the country and went on to become even more famous when the Brown Shoe Co. One hundred years ago this week, Buster Brown and his dog Tige made their debut in a Sunday comic strip in the New York Herald. I love to hear from you, but if you want to be sure that I receive your e-mail and respond, then you should read this post first.- He was a little rich kid with a blond pageboy haircut who was always getting into mischief, but also had a serious side.Buster's face is badly drawn, Tige is off-model, but Ross always has time for those frilly dresses. The last four panels of the September 22 strip are definitely Ross, the rest of the strip it's harder to tell.Īnd finally on September 29, I'm calling this Ross in his 'deadline doom' mode. If I had to make a bet, I'd say this masthead has been reused from an old strip. On September 1 we get a masthead that looks like vintage Outcault, over an at best indifferently drawn strip that has some telltale Ross-isms on Buster's face (one thing I look for is cheek pouches these days, as they are not something I associate with Outcault). On a different note, I think the strip of the 11th is a real hoot. What does it mean? Is he complimenting Ross on a good ghosting job, or is he merely patting himself on the back for a good strip? On the August 18 strip we get an enigmatic signature line, 'I think this is pretty good,', along with a rather shaky Outcault signature.

The drawing is certainly less fussy than what Outcault used to produce, but it still has many of his distintive poses and stylistic flourishes with little in the way of obvious Ross-isms. Is it possible that Buster, Tige and Mary Jane are now being drawn by Ross but close enough to the Outcault standard that I fail to tell the difference? Sometimes Ross definitely still misses on these characters, but is that a true tell anymore, or a momentary lapse?Īfter August 4th, we are back to what looks more like Outcault to me, but who's to say. On August 4 we get a page that seems to put my worries to rest. If he's learned to draw Tige in Outcault's distinctive manner, I'm really losing an important element of my meager art-spotting toolkit.

I find it hard to believe that this was the sum total of Ross' involvement, so I'm guessing that he's getting better able to throw us curveballs that look more like Outcault. But is Ross getting better at aping Outcault's style? On the 7th we see a signature Ross pose in story panel 11, and on the 28th Tige adopts a Ross pose twice (panels 4 and 8). The July 1918 strips are a good example of what I would have been for a long while calling the work of Outcault with an occasional minor assist from Ross.

Buster brown comic