Buster Brown — 1905-11-12

Richard F. Outcault's *Buster Brown* ran in the New York Herald beginning in 1902, and this Sunday page shows the full-color half-page format that defined American newspaper comics. Eight panels follow Buster as he volunteers to run a church fair grab-bag, gets a live lobster stuffed inside by a prankster, and ends — inevitably — upended and humiliated, his dog Tige looking on. The strip closes with Buster's signature "Resolved" confession, a recurring moral joke in which the boy admits he failed again. Outcault had already invented the recurring-character strip with *The Yellow Kid* (1895); here his confident panel-to-panel staging, expressive speech balloons, and weekly resolution gag gave Sunday comics the narrative rhythm that would eventually migrate directly into the comic-book page.