Buster Brown

R. F. Outcault's Buster Brown ran in the *New York Herald* beginning in 1902, starring a mischievous blond boy, his dog Tige, and a rotating cast of foils. This nine-panel Sunday page unfolds in China: Buster and Tige ride a boxy automobile labeled *Chow Chow* through a pagoda landscape, lose control, and knock over Uncle — a recurring adult victim — before the whole contraption crashes spectacularly. Each panel advances the chase through tight sequential logic, with speech balloons and a closing prose "Resolved" moral signed by Buster himself. Outcault, who had already invented the modern comic strip with *The Yellow Kid* (1895), here perfected the Sunday page's full toolkit — recurring cast, serialized gag structure, integrated text-and-image storytelling — the direct template for every comic book that followed.