Buster Brown

R.F. Outcault's Buster Brown ran in the *New York Herald* Sunday color pages from 1902, making it one of the earliest recurring-character strips in American newspapers. This page — titled *Buster Brown and Cousin Fanny's Beau* — unfolds in nine ink-line panels: Buster's dog Tige, established as a philosophical straight-man from the strip's outset, opens the sequence; a suitor courts Cousin Fanny behind a folding screen while Buster eavesdrops; a proposal is accepted, the man then tumbles, and Buster extracts a bribe before delivering the strip's signature closing 'Resolved' moral sermon. Outcault had already invented the speech balloon with *The Yellow Kid* (1895); here he deploys it with confident economy. These Sunday pages — distributed by syndicates, collected into pamphlets by department stores as promotions — are the direct commercial and formal ancestors of the comic book.