Buster Brown

R. F. Outcault's *Buster Brown* ran in the New York Herald beginning in 1902, transplanting the mischievous middle-class boy—sailor suit, round collar, dog Tige at his heels—from the tenement world of Outcault's earlier Yellow Kid into a prosperous suburban setting. This Sunday page follows a single comic thread across twelve panels: Uncle Jack promises Buster a donkey if he leaves the barnyard animals alone; Buster immediately attempts to lasso the gift animal, which escapes, drags everyone through the yard, and snaps the rope. The strip closes, as always, with Buster's written *Resolved*, a mock moral confession. Outcault's crisp ink line, confident use of sequential panels, and the *Resolved* device as recurring structural joke helped fix the grammar of American newspaper comics at the moment the form was inventing itself.