Buster Brown — 1903-06-28

Richard Outcault's Buster Brown ran in the *New York Herald* Sunday color supplements beginning in 1902, and this page — titled *Buster Brown and a Pair of Roller Skates* — shows the strip's full formal machinery at work. Nine panels follow Buster and his bull terrier Tige as newly gifted roller skates turn a quiet house into wreckage: a maid, a policeman, and a cook all fall victim before Buster lands in his customary concluding 'Resolved!' moral monologue, delivered straight to the reader with cheerful insincerity. Outcault had already invented the recurring-character newspaper strip with *The Yellow Kid* (1895); here he refines the panel grid, integrates speech balloons organically into the art, and establishes the child-plus-dog duo that merchandisers would stamp on shoes, ceramics, and clothing nationwide — making *Buster Brown* one of the first comic characters to generate a licensing empire.