Buster Brown

R. F. Outcault's *Buster Brown* ran as a full-page Sunday color strip beginning in 1902, and this installment—set in Venice—shows Buster, his dog Tige, and an uncle figure piloting a gondola with mounting chaos: Santa obliges a sailing request, the vessel spins out of control, someone goes overboard, and Buster effects a rescue. Each panel advances the slapstick through tightly composed ink line and speech balloons that carry most of the narrative weight. The strip closes with Buster's trademark "Resolved" moral. Outcault had already invented the modern comic strip form with *The Yellow Kid* (1895); *Buster Brown* refined it—recurring cast, sequential panels, integrated text—establishing conventions that Sunday newspaper pages exported directly into the first comic books of the 1930s.