Buster Brown

Richard Outcault's Buster Brown ran in the *New York Herald* beginning in 1902, making it one of the earliest recurring-character Sunday pages—a format whose numbered panels, speech balloons, and weekly moral 'Resolved' tag helped codify the visual grammar comics still use. This nine-panel strip follows Buster and his tiger Tige riding a toy locomotive that somehow hurtles down an Alpine slope past the Matterhorn, scattering alarmed bystanders before crash-landing at the bottom. The final panel delivers Buster's signature resolution—a sardonic life-lesson. Outcault had already invented the Yellow Kid; with Buster he perfected the middle-class mischief strip, a model that shaped later page comics and, eventually, the comic book format itself.