Buster Brown

R. F. Outcault's *Buster Brown* launched in the *New York Herald* in 1902, starring a mischievous, Fauntleroy-suited boy, his long-suffering dog Tige, and a signature resolution panel in which Buster vows to reform — and never does. This New Year's installment opens with Buster's 1904 resolution (sandpaper shoe soles, a typewriter), then follows him and Tige into a department-store bargain sale that descends into comic chaos: jostling crowds, flying hats, a 'mad dog' panic. Outcault, who had already invented the modern comic strip with *The Yellow Kid*, refined the form here — consistent characters across sequential panels, speech balloons anchored to speakers, expressive crowd staging. Sunday color pages like this one were the direct ancestor of the comic book.