Johnny Gruelle's Bud Smith

Johnny Gruelle, famed creator of Raggedy Ann, spent a little time working for the World Color Printing Company of St. Louis Missouri. World Color (my favorite syndicate) did preprint Sunday comic sections. If you, a newspaper owner, wanted to add a Sunday color comic section to your paper but couldn't afford to print your own color comics or hire an outside printer to do the job for you, then companies like World Color were your last resort. They printed a standard comic section, added your logo to it and shipped you however many copies you needed.

Gruelle (who signed himself Grue during this period) did a number of strips for World Color. The Bud Smith strip was not created by him, but he did a few episodes of it in 1908-09. The strip was created by George Herriman in 1904.