Buster Brown

Nine panels follow Buster and his bulldog Tige as they set up a box camera in a field and photograph a succession of reluctant strangers—a gardener, a snake charmer, a stout farmer—culminating in a flash explosion that sends everyone scrambling. R. F. Outcault draws the action with confident ink line, expressive silhouettes, and speech balloons whose lettering varies in weight to convey shouting or wheedling. A closing 'Resolved' paragraph, Buster's signature moralizing joke, caps the page. Outcault had already invented the recurring-character Sunday page with *The Yellow Kid* (1895); *Buster Brown*, launched 1902 in the *New York Herald*, refined the form—stable cast, consistent panel grid, integrated word-and-image storytelling—that syndicates would soon sell nationwide and that proto-comic-book reprint collections would package for newsstands by the 1930s.