Buster Brown — 1907-02-17

Richard Outcault's Buster Brown ran in the *New York Herald* beginning in 1902, making Outcault the only cartoonist to produce two landmark American strips — he had already given newspapers the Yellow Kid. This Washington's Birthday page opens with a patriotic splash panel spoofing the Delaware crossing, then follows Buster, his dog Tige, and a rotund companion as they paint a fence red, white, and blue, get caught mid-prank, and deliver a moralizing final panel signed in Buster's own voice. Outcault's confident cross-hatching, numbered panels, and integrated speech balloons exemplify the Sunday page grammar that would directly seed the comic book format two decades later — Outcault helped invent the rules everyone else inherited.