Buster Brown — 1909-09-26

How Tige Got Stung follows Buster Brown's bulldog Tige through twelve panels of slapstick cause-and-effect: a boy shakes apples from a tree, Tige marvels at the fruit, disturbs a hornets' nest hidden in the trunk, and receives a thorough stinging — concluding with Tige's philosophic "Resolve," the strip's signature moralizing coda. Outcault draws in loose, warm line with convincing foliage and expressive animal pantomime; the hornets' attack is conveyed through radiating motion lines and scattered apples. Outcault had already invented the modern comic strip with The Yellow Kid (1895), establishing the speech balloon as a narrative device. Buster Brown, launched in 1902 in the New York Herald, proved that recurring characters across weekly Sunday pages could anchor a franchise — clothing lines, shoes, and stage adaptations followed, making Tige one of the most recognized animals in American popular culture.