Buster Brown

Richard Outcault's *Buster Brown* ran in the *New York Herald* beginning in 1902, featuring the mischievous, well-dressed boy, his dog Tige, and his long-suffering household. This Sunday page follows the cook Mary Ellen's departure and Buster's scheme involving antique shop mirrors — placing one here, one in another room — to trick the new cook into seeing a distorted, ghostly reflection of herself. Nine panels move from shopfront negotiation through mirror comedy to slapstick collapse, closing with Buster's signature "Resolved" moral monologue. Outcault, who had already invented Yellow Kid, perfected here the recurring character, the speech balloon integrated into illustrated action, and the weekly full-page narrative arc — structural conventions that American comic books would inherit wholesale.