Buster Brown

Richard Outcault's Buster Brown ran as a full-page Sunday color feature beginning in 1902, one of the earliest newspaper strips to establish the recurring-cast format that would define the medium. This page follows the mischievous Buster, his sister Mary Jane, and his bull terrier Tige on a visit to a fire station — the fireman slides the pole, Buster attempts it, chaos follows, and the final panel delivers Outcault's signature "Resolved" moral, spoken by Buster in mock-repentance. Outcault had already invented the speech balloon as a storytelling device with The Yellow Kid (1895); here his panel-to-panel staging, varied framings, and expressive linework show the visual grammar of comics fully formed. Sunday newspaper pages like this one are the direct ancestors of the comic book.