From the exhibition
Buster Brown
· March 10, 1907
R. F. Outcault's Buster Brown ran in the *New York Herald* beginning in 1902, making it one of the earliest recurring-character Sunday pages and a cornerstone of American comics history. This nine-panel strip follows the mischievous, sailor-suited Buster, his dog Tige, and a live teddy bear through a toy-shop escapade ending in a chase and Buster's signature moralizing 'Resolved' speech. Outcault deploys confident ink linework, expressive figures, and interlocking speech balloons to carry a chase narrative across three tiers with ease. The Sunday page format he and contemporaries like Winsor McCay perfected — sequential panels, recurring cast, balloon dialogue — directly established the visual grammar that comic books inherited wholesale a generation later.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain
