Buster Brown

Richard Outcault's Buster Brown ran in the New York Herald Sunday color pages beginning in 1902, starring a mischievous blond boy in a wide collar, his dog Tige, and long-suffering family. This eight-panel Thanksgiving strip follows Buster's escalating chaos with a live turkey — the bird terrorizes the household, sends adults tumbling, and ends with Buster's signature "Resolved" panel, a mock-solemn moral confession delivered straight to the reader. Outcault had already invented the modern comic strip with The Yellow Kid (1895), pioneering speech balloons and recurring cast. Below the strip, period advertisements for moving-picture machines and premium offers remind us these Sunday pages were commercial engines — the direct ancestors of the comic book pamphlets that would follow three decades later.