Little Nemo: Adventures In Slumberland 1905

Buster Brown 1902

Buster Brown is a comic strip character created in 1902 by Richard Outcault.  Buster Brown was also used as an advertising icon for the Brown Shoe Company.  It is believed that the actor Buster Keaton inspired the Character's name while he was a child acting with Vaudeville.

The character's appearance was based on Granville Hamilton Fisher, a son of Charles and Anna Fisher.  Fisher's physical appearance, and pageboy hairstyle, was copied by Outcault and used for Buster Brown.  Tiffany Liu's drawing of Buster and his pitbull, Tige, captures the essence of the characters and their endearing friendship. 

Katzenjammer Kids 1897

The Katzenjammer Kids is an American comic strip created by Rudolph Dirks and Harold Knerr.
It debuted in 1897 in the publication the American Humorist, a Sunday supplement of the New York Journal.  Dirks is believed to be one of the first cartoonist to express words in comics through the use of dialogue balloons.


After a series of legal battles from 1912 and 1914, Dirks left the strip and began a new strip, first titled Hans and Fritz and then The Captain and the Kids. It featured the same characters seen in The Katzenjammer Kids.  The two separate versions of the strip competed with each other until 1979, when The Captain and the Kids ended its six-decade run. The Katzenjammer Kids is still distributed by King Features today, making it the oldest comic strip still in existence with the longest run.  Nathen Duran depicts Hanz and Fritz in a very simple style with the expressive faces that made the original strip such a great success.

The Yellow Kid 1895

 The Yellow Kid is the undisputed first official comic strip character.  He was created in 1895, by Richard F. Outcault, for the strip Hogan's Alley.  It was one of the first Sunday supplement comic strips in an American newspaper.  Jack Che's drawing depicts the Yellow Kid in a pose very fitting for the character and his unorthodox activities.