Worden Wood, the Ghost of Buster Brown

        

  R |ichard Fenton Outcault grew to despise his own creation, THE YELLOW KID, once it became associated with Yellow Journalism. On several occasions he downright cursed him.

      

“When I die, don’t wear yellow crepe, don’t let them put a Yellow Kid on my tombstone, and don’t let the Yellow Kid himself come to my funeral.” — R.F. Outcault (1863-1928)

     

Outcault was three-plus years away from the Herald when the topper and the following page from BUSTER BROWN ON HIS TRAVELS, Cupples & Leon, 1909, were drawn. Rick Marschall informs us BUSTER BROWN was drawn, anonymously, these years by Worden Wood.

Other Buster Brown ghosts included Will Lawler, Norman Jennett and Wallace Morgan. Rumor has it that Winsor McCay drew a few Buster Brown pages in 1910.

Checking some Sunday pages with Little Nemo on the front page, Pierre-Henry Lenfant of Lomé (TOGO) found on the reverse some unsigned ghosted black and white Buster Brown (below). Those pages were published in 1909 in the Los Angeles Sunday Times, and the Saint Louis Republic and would also appear to be Worden Wood’s work. 

[1] Worden Wood, 1909

[2] May 16, 1909

[3] Sep 12, 1909

[4] Dec 19, 1909

[5] Brazilian kids magazine O Tico-Tico, 
No. 559, June 21, 1916. 
Artist 
Luís Gomes Loureiro.

[6] By Worden Wood, 1909

[7] By R.F. Outcault, Aug 16, 1903

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Thanks to my dear niece Megan Evans for the gift of Buster Brown on His Travels.