Buster Brown

R. F. Outcault's *Buster Brown* ran in the New York Herald beginning in 1902, following Outcault's earlier *Yellow Kid* — the strip widely credited with establishing the recurring comics character. This Sunday page sends Buster, his dog Tige, and an uncle aboard an ocean liner: Buster commandeers the helm, chaos ensues, someone goes overboard, and the final panel delivers Buster's trademark signed "Resolved" moral, here cheerfully self-serving. Outcault's draftsmanship is assured — crowd scenes, nautical hardware, slapstick motion all handled in confident ink line. The Sunday broadsheet page, with its sequenced panels and integrated speech balloons, was the direct ancestor of the comic book format that would be codified by the 1930s.