Buster Brown — 1903-08-30

Nine panels follow Buster Brown and his bull terrier Tige as they throw a party for the local dog catcher — luring him into a chaotic mob of dogs that trounces him thoroughly. Buster opens by reading a public notice threatening unlicensed dogs, rallies his animal friends, and the strip closes with two framed 'Resolved!' texts: Buster's mock-solemn moral and the dog catcher's battered vow to quit the profession. R. F. Outcault, who had already launched the Yellow Kid in 1895, here refined the recurring-character Sunday page format that would define American comics: consistent cast, sequential panels, integrated speech balloons, and a punchline resolution. These half-page Sunday features were the direct structural ancestors of the comic book, which emerged when publishers simply folded and bound the same printed pages for newsstand sale.