Buster Brown

R. F. Outcault's Buster Brown ran in the New York Herald beginning in 1902, making it one of the earliest Sunday color pages to build a recurring cast — the mischievous boy, his dog Tige, and his long-suffering family — into a genuine franchise. This eight-panel strip follows Buster and Tige at what appears to be an outdoor juggling exhibition, where a Hindu ball-juggler performs escalating tricks; Tige ends up inside a large ball, chaos ensues, and the final text panel delivers Buster's mock-solemn 'Resolved.' Outcault pioneered the integrated speech balloon and sequential panel grammar that Hearst and Pulitzer's Sunday supplements exported nationwide. Those broadsheet pages — not a bound pamphlet — are the true origin point of American comics as a popular form.