Buster Brown and a Calf

Richard F. Outcault's Buster Brown ran in the New York Herald's color Sunday pages beginning in 1902, making it one of the earliest strips built around a single recurring cast: the sailor-suited Buster, his dog Tige, and a closing moral-resolution box signed by Buster himself. This page follows Buster as he unties a calf, confidently leads it on a run about the farm, and is promptly dragged through the barnyard in spectacular chaos — roosters, horses, and hens scattering across panels 7–10 — before he delivers his deadpan "Resolved" verdict in panel 11. Outcault, who had already launched the Yellow Kid, here refined the Sunday page's visual grammar: sequential numbered panels, integrated speech balloons, and a stable star character whose face sold merchandise nationwide before the strip was a year old.