Buster Brown

R. F. Outcault's Buster Brown ran in the *New York Herald* beginning in 1902, making it one of the earliest recurring-character Sunday pages in American newspapers. This strip follows Buster and his dog Tige encountering a Chinese dragon kite — the panels track the kite ascending, tangling with the boys, and culminating in chaos, with Buster's signature "Resolved" moral closing the page. Outcault's clean linework, expressive silhouettes, and speech balloons flowing naturally from characters demonstrate the visual grammar he had been refining since *The Yellow Kid* (1895). Those Sunday pages — large, multi-panel, printed in color — were the direct ancestors of the comic book format, establishing panel sequencing and recurring cast as commercial and narrative standards.