Buster Brown Visits the London Zoo and Rides the Elephant

Nine panels follow the irrepressible Buster Brown and his dog Tige through a disastrous elephant ride at the London Zoo. Outcault sequences the gag with physical precision: mounting, bouncing, tumbling, fleeing — the elephant's trunk delivering a final indignant swat. Speech balloons carry Buster's bravado collapsing into panic, and the strip closes with his formal "Resolved" moral, a running device Outcault used to give Buster mock-penitent last words each week. R. F. Outcault had already launched the modern comic strip with *The Yellow Kid* (1895–98); *Buster Brown*, debuting 1902, refined the recurring-character Sunday page into a reliable commercial property, helping establish the visual conventions — panel grids, integrated dialogue, week-to-week continuity of character — that would define American comics for the next century.