Buster Brown

Nine panels follow Buster, his dog Tige, and a turbaned uncle as they smuggle rubber snakes aboard a ship in a trunk, inflate them to terrorize fellow passengers, then get caught when customs men crack open the crate dockside — 'Snakes Alive!' The strip closes with Buster's characteristic moral resolution, here signed *Buster Brown — India*. Outcault drew in a fluid ink line inherited from 19th-century illustration, using circular porthole vignettes as repeated framing devices and speech balloons that vary in size to carry comic timing. Outcault had already invented the modern comic strip with *The Yellow Kid* (1895); *Buster Brown*, launched in the New York Herald in 1902, refined recurring characters, sequential panel grammar, and the Sunday full-page format that would directly seed the comic book industry thirty years later.