Buster Brown

Richard Outcault's *Buster Brown* ran in the *New York Herald* beginning in 1902, starring a mischievous blonde boy, his dog Tige, and his long-suffering household. This Sunday page unfolds across nine panels: Buster and Tige smuggle iron weights into cook Mary's biscuit dough, the resulting hockey-puck results sink a dinner guest's appetite, and Buster's closing moral-in-reverse fills the final panel. Outcault drew in a clean, densely cross-hatched line, packing speech balloons into lively crowd compositions. His earlier *Yellow Kid* (1895) had pioneered the recurring comics character; *Buster Brown* refined the Sunday-page format—sequential panels, integrated dialogue, a signature closing monologue—tools every later cartoonist inherited. The strip also became one of the first comics properties licensed to merchandise, most famously a shoe brand still active today.