Buster Brown

Richard Outcault's Buster Brown ran in the *New York Herald* beginning 1902, following Outcault's earlier *Yellow Kid* — the strip that helped establish the Sunday color page as a mass medium. This nine-panel page follows Buster and his bull terrier Tige as they dress store mannequins as suitors and deliver them to an Old Maids' Home, sending the residents into delighted commotion before the ruse collapses. Outcault's ruled panels, integrated speech balloons, and a recurring cast with a fixed visual identity were foundational conventions. The strip closes, as always, with Buster's signed moral 'Resolved' — a deadpan joke undermining whatever mischief preceded it. Buster Brown became one of the first comic characters licensed commercially, his face appearing on shoes still sold today.