Buster Brown Starts for Europe

Twelve panels follow the mischievous, Lord Fauntleroy-suited Buster Brown as he packs trunks, bids farewell to his mother, rides to the dock of the American & European Steamship Line, and boards with his pit bull Tige in tow. R. F. Outcault closes with Buster's signed 'Resolved' moral—his trademark device, here admitting the trip is doctor's orders plus a desire for variety. Outcault had already invented the modern comic strip with *The Yellow Kid* (1895); *Buster Brown* debuted in the New York Herald in 1902, refining the grammar of sequential panels, integrated speech balloons, and a recurring cast that readers tracked week to week. These Sunday full-page color strips—syndicated across the country—were the direct commercial and formal ancestor of the comic book format that would be codified by the 1930s.