Buster Brown — 1904-12-18

Twelve panels follow Buster Brown through a London hotel Christmas Eve: kissed goodnight by his mother, he hides a sack of toys from Santa Claus, then wakes Christmas morning mystified by their disappearance. Santa, drawn in full fur-trimmed regalia, distributes the recovered gifts to street children in the penultimate panel. Outcault closes with Buster's printed 'Resolved' moral — a signature device of the strip. The draftsmanship is assured: architectural interiors rendered in fine cross-hatch, speech balloons integrated into action, and a reliable cast (Buster, his dog Tige, his mother) sustaining continuity across weeks. Outcault had already invented the modern comics page with *The Yellow Kid*; *Buster Brown*, launched 1902, refined the recurring-character Sunday strip that would directly seed the comic book format.