Buster Brown

R. F. Outcault's *Buster Brown* ran in the New York Herald beginning 1902, transplanting the mischief-engine formula Outcault had perfected in *The Yellow Kid* into a prosperous household. This Sunday page — "Goes to the Matinee" — opens with Buster's mock-solemn "Resolved" and "Notice" texts flanking the title oval, then unfolds across twelve panels: Buster and his bull terrier Tige crash a vaudeville theatre, Tige bolts through the chorus girls' dressing room, chaos erupts onstage, and a spanking closes the loop. Outcault's clean line, confident staging, and speech-balloon rhythm were foundational moves in the visual grammar every subsequent cartoonist inherited. The Sunday newspaper page — large, color, weekly — was the direct commercial and formal ancestor of the comic book.