Buster Brown

Richard Outcault's Buster Brown ran as a color Sunday page in the *New York Herald* from 1902, following his earlier *Yellow Kid* — arguably the first recurring comic-strip character. Each installment ends with Buster's formal 'Resolved' moral, here a rambling meditation on travel and Columbus, signed in Buster's own hand. This strip follows the boy and his dog Tige helping pack an enormous trunk for a family voyage, with pratfalls, a caged cat, and the luggage finally bursting through a wall. Outcault's panels flow left-to-right across two tiers, speech balloons nested naturally above figures — conventions still in use today. These Sunday pages, syndicated nationally, were the direct commercial and formal ancestor of the comic book format.