Buster Brown

Richard Outcault's Buster Brown ran in the *New York Herald* from 1902, starring a sailor-suited boy, his dog Tige, and a closing moral resolution Buster never quite believed himself. This Sunday page shows Buster hiding inside a suit of armor in what appears to be an antique shop, alarming his uncle and a companion across seven panels before tumbling into water in a slapstick finale. Outcault drew with clean outlines and confident staging, moving figures through consistent architectural space—skills he had already demonstrated inventing the speech balloon's modern use in *The Yellow Kid* (1895). The Sunday full-page format, with its numbered panels and recurring cast, was the direct template from which comic books were assembled and sold as reprints by the 1930s.