You know how our grandparentsâ Halloween costumes are chilling for the wrong reason these days? Some kidâs rabbit mask was cute in the Depression, but looks like the hotel-ghost of a serial killer now. That was Buster Brown. He was early 20th century’s first go at a gleeful twerp, but modern eyes have seen enough internet obscenities to recognize a psychophage. I donât know why weâre making horror movies about lovable teddy Winnie the Pooh when Busterâs been the creepy giggling coming from the public domain attic for years.
Created in 1902 by R.F. Outcault as a reversal of his popular slumrat The Yellow Kid, Buster was an apple-cheeked rich kid whose beauty belied his insufferable antics. He assuredly grew up to be the jerk who tosses women into the pool at Gatsbyâs parties. Busterâs sidekick was his Cheshire dog Tige, and there were a bunch of other characters we donât care about, because none of them is seventeen poltergeists fighting to animate the corpse of a drowned child.
Not counting that one nightmare you keep having, the Yellow Kid is most recognizable these days as the inspiration for Sin Cityâs sexually undeterrable Yellow Bastard. Let me tell you the original kid, aka Mickey Dugan, was way more prone to racism, considering he was an Irish stereotype whose appearance barely qualified as human:
These two imps first appeared together on a 1904 postcard, but by that token, Batman and Superman first teamed up for a Worldâs Fair cover even though they never dueled over Martha within its pages. So it wasnât until 1907 that Buster and Mickey met in a dream-tale that is likely comicsâ first crossover and also its first homage to Little Nemo in Slumberland.
If you only read the normal comics, youâd think Buster was just a fancy Dennis the Menace. But by 1907 the comics would be the last way to encounter him, because Buster was the Garfield of his day. Pick five random Buster Brown comics, and six of them will advertise Buster products and productions. See, speaking of the Worldâs Fair, Outcault had spent 1904 in St. Louis at the peak of its âMeet Me inâŚâ popularity, where he sold Buster out as an ad mascot to 200 licensees.
As 1-900-HOTDOGâs own Lydia Bugg conclusively proved, cartoon licensing scours a mind of sanity. For every one of these products, Busterâs glazed stare says chloral hydrate, but his wicked grin says cathinone to the grave. Whatever they dosed him with to move product, it opened The Red Door. Buster in the strip is drawn as a normal kid, but Buster in ads looks like the meat-stuffed gunny sack you give to a couple mourning a misplaced reborn doll. Whereas The Yellow Kid had dots for eyes in his goblin pug-mug, Buster was a perfect child, and therefore bore the smooth features of White God Himself: pert jowls, the least amount of nose possible, and huge, expressive eyes.
In fact: too much expression and eyeball for comfort. First stop: the famous Buster Brown Shoe Co.!
Is Buster tweaked out of his gourd or do these shoes come with a free case of Gravesâ disease? If his eyes open any wider theyâre going to turn into hyperspheres, yet theyâre sunk so deep in their sockets time slows down near their surface. Itâs almost like the devil-skeleton inside canât grow his flesh past the age it possessed him. Thereâs nothing here but stretched skin and glazed jelly.
To avoid selecting for bias letâs start with a control: Wikimedia files. This is a crowdsourced series of exemplary images measuring Busterâs life and crimes. Leaving aside the strip where he talks about dead souls, there are eight gallery images:
Right out of the gate comes thisâŚwell, I guess you canât call it a threat, since once youâve seen it nothing can save you. Relax: the violence is already done, the chaos egg laid within your brain. Close your eyes while their lids still work. Youâll see his leering face slowly become your own. Youâre a vector for Bustration now. See that flesh-colored wall behind him? Nobody ever said he was bursting through plaster lathe.
Oh. Okay, this is pretty normal. This is just a comic strip about a boy and his talking dog mailing out party invites. Hey, do me a favor real quick: start enumerating people who talk to a dog that only they can hear?
I made that list in under a minute and 75% of it was murderers, 2.5 of whom were satanically motivated. Behold their Gilgamesh. Still: this being a strip and not an ad, itâs not explicitly terrifying.
Maybe I spoke too soon! Maâs face twists with revulsion: no! No, not a second one! What if it grows up to be the antichrist to Busterâs splendid blond beast? Or worse, what if itâs normal but one day, her attention slips long enough to leave it alone withâŚthis elder thing? Too late! It has seen the bundle at the door. âIâll take care of her,â the unchild tells her, attempting to calm her in as much as it can understand human emotions. After all, it wouldnât do to have the neighbors making note of her increasing instability. Not yet. No, not until the blood-moon eclipse. But still: the phrasing is deliberately ambiguous.
I donât care what time, place, or cultureâanyone who came home to find this dripping down the walls would understand too late what the iron scent in their nostrils had already warned them about: Buster has breached the circle of salt, and now we comprehend why so many corpses around Murray Hill have been found with their hearts removed.
âIâm not a Pinheadâ is EXACTLY what a Cenobite would say, and Hellraiser II already proved theyâre not above recruiting kids for their prog rock album.
And just like that weâre back to normal, even if Buster still hasnât grown a nose. Itâs nice that this victim of the worldâs first acid-on-baby attack still loves Christmasâperhaps because the soft, twinkling lights are easier on his vision? It takes his eyelid muscles ten times the force you humans use to blink.
Honestly? This is the best one. Itâs a sweet picture of three friends sharing a laugh. Unless that kid in the porterâs uniform is weeping. Why? I donât know, maybe his parents were found with their eyelids gnawed off by two sets of dental prints, one canine, one human. These are the possibilities.
This looks like a menu but itâs the French cover to one of the earliest comic books, a collection of Busterâs mischief (painting resolutions on walls). Please note that size and scale have no meaning, because reality breaks in the Demon Tigeâs personal distortion field.
Okay, with that baseline, letâs study the clearest scans from image search:
Tigeâs wordplay canât distract from this child with an elephant gun. Buster is barely old enough to read. His mother still dresses him in dandywear. How did he get this rifle? What is he going to kill? This pun only works if Buster will be shooting within range of Jack, or the police will get involved. Nothing about this is okay.
Buster grins maniacally at you, patient zero of a laughing disease that ends with you drowning in your own tears.
âOh, hello! I didnât see you there. Why yes, this marvelous red liquid blackens as it dries! Itâs the first of seven riddles that will unseal my true fatherâs prison when the submind corrupts itself to comprehend them.â
Most real-life productions either give normal Buster with sex-party Tige, or normal Tige with David Lynchâs Buster Brown. When they cast an actor without proptosis, proptosis will be given to him. (Protopsis means âexplosive eyeballsâ in Dutch.)
Despite this, we know the twerp has eyelids because the Buster Brown Shoe logo winks at you badly. He’s not used to closing his eyes because Buster never sleeps.
âResolved! That the prettiest girl is the one I want to pin my tie onâŚBuster Brown.â âBuster Brown
âFunny place for a necktie!â âTige
âSaliva samples tie the Brown boy to this series of corpses with their tongues pulled through their slit throats. GUILTY!â âJudge Parker
Every time Buster writes on a wall his facial topography averages out a little more. When the final trumpet sounds, heâs just going to be a volleyball with a pageboy haircut and a deadpan leer. But I guess I shouldnât make fun of a kid with whatever the opposite of ichthyosis is. Letâs just be thankful the crew of the Event Horizon did such a good job gluing his eyeballs back in place after Buster gouged them out to stop the visions.
At first glance, it seems like Tige ate a child. But those are all Busterâs trademarks, and the longer I stare at this, the more I think heâs ghost-riding his familiar.
In a vanishing instance of Buster [With Nose] but a recurring one of Buster [Without Eyebrows] we see that he becomes a haunted marionette of every woman on an over-50 dating appâs Duluth results. The real error was giving him irises to emphasize his pinprick pupils. Buster is higher than Godâs hairline. His peepers look like the painted stones Romans used to keep rigor mortis of the eyelids in check.
Not all of these were drawn by Outcault, but itâs telling that all artists characterize Busterâs as different stages of unembalmed corpse. This is a before and after argument for Botox treatment of Cushingâs syndrome. And let me save you some googling on that joke: Buster is allergic to oxygen, since in his dimension they breathe ultra-condensed sulfur. The result is a Tales From the Crypt where the disobedient kid who wanders away from the tour group ends up stuffed in the museum exhibit.
Poor fool, his mark is upon you now. You will pray for death as the world turns its face from your decay. You are become unto The Brown Men, and hell followeth.
Buster goes to see the Buster Brown musical, which itself was an ad for Buster Brown-Branded Great War Throwing Grenades. Tige attacks Stage-Tige, because the Left Hand Path demands one destroy oneself to obtain worldly desires. The Rite of Capitalist Sin-Ergy is complete.
Jackâs gun wasnât a one-time thing. Buster is armed at all times, but itâs not what you think. He keeps trying to kill himself only to wake up surrounded by torn pieces of meat.
The shattered heart, the fresh, dripping red medium, the declaration of inarguable intentâŚif you have virgin daughters, kill them now as a mercy.
This is a later work, after a surgeon split Busterâs corpus callosum in a vain effort to isolate his evil right brain in sensory deprivation forever. Tige, being an extradimensional entity unbound by laws of space, shrinks here to dance quite literally on the head of a pin.
Jesus, he looks like the grandchild spawned from two Dick Tracy villains marrying off their kids in a failed bid for peace. This is what that Samuel Johnson meme looked like back when he was young enough to believe this shit.
Gaily marching to our destiny, la di da! Suddenly, Busterâs eyes swell as his neck swivels to shatter the fourth wall. âNothing can stop us,â he chuckles. âNot even the fiction-membrane.â An icy finger traces your spine like a whispered promise.
Buster makes each pair of shoes himself, using locally sourced leather from previous customers. Say what you will about the ethics, but itâs ecologically admirable. Until 2010 you could still find Buster Brown Shoes not far from where Outcault lived in Queens. This blog wants you to believe it closed in bankruptcy, but isnât it more likely it was one of those magical shops that vanishes when you go back to return the Wishing Spats that have killed the very sweetheart you wished to impress with your foot speed?
Come Christmas, even Buster thinks he might have oversaturated the market. As his comp merch piles up, compare the normal kid with his cardboard cutoutâs thousand-parsec stare. Ad Buster has watched universes die in a sandbox of dust.
Oh no! Heâs out of paint! Winking at you like a stroke victim trying to morse code âRunning makes your fear taste better,â he then stretches his neck to unnatural lengths. The form of a python is the only way he can crush you for easier draining. Behind him, Tige has shrunk small enough to climb down your throat and begin extracting your bones for his own purposes.
Come on! Itâs not even in its socket at this point! Kill the boy! KILL HIM FOR ALL OUR SAKES!
Oh God, no. You shot it six times, but it sat right back up, laughing. Quickly, reload the cylinder before it cackles the true name of despair. Our troubles have just begun!
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