Buster Brown and a Few Mice

R. F. Outcault's *Buster Brown* ran in the *New York Herald* Sunday pages beginning in 1902, making it one of the earliest recurring-character comic strips with a named, consistent cast. This full-page color Sunday strip—here reproduced in newsprint black and white—follows Buster, his bulldog Tige, and his sister as their released mice terrorize his mother's bridge party: nine numbered panels move from domestic calm through escalating chaos to a telephone call for police, closing with Outcault's signature moral-resolution box quoting Washington on honesty. Outcault had already invented the modern speech balloon with *The Yellow Kid* (1895); here his fluid draftsmanship and confident panel pacing demonstrate exactly the sequential visual grammar that would, decades later, define the comic book format.