Buster Brown Goes to Work

R. F. Outcault's *Buster Brown* ran in the New York Herald beginning in 1902, making it one of the first Sunday-page strips built around a single recurring cast: the mischievous, sailor-suited Buster, his long-suffering dog Tige, and his little companion Mary Jane. This page follows Buster as he resolves to fight idleness by becoming a telegraph messenger boy — gets hired, bungles the job, and lands back at square one, closing with his characteristic moralizing speech balloon. Outcault drew confident ink lines, varied panel sizes for comic rhythm, and used speech balloons with practiced ease. Sunday color pages like this one, collected and sold cheaply, directly seeded the comic-book format that emerged by the 1930s.