Buster Brown — 1903-08-02

Buster Brown at the Sea Shore unfolds across nine panels plus a panoramic header strip crowded with bathing-suit chaos, a bolting black dog (Tige), and shrieking bathers. The numbered changing-booth doors (Nos. 42–49) drive the gag: Buster misdirects women into the wrong cabanas, triggering a cascade of outraged exits and flying garments. Speech balloons float freely above the figures; Outcault varies panel width to control comic rhythm, slowing the chase and speeding the payoff. The final panel plants Buster's resolution — his trademark moral coda. Outcault had already invented the form with *The Yellow Kid* (1895); here he deploys every tool of the Sunday-page grammar — recurring cast, sequential causality, expressive typography — that would migrate directly into the comic-book format three decades later.