Everything about Yellow Kid totally explained
The Yellow Kid emerged as the lead character in
Hogan's Alley drawn by
Richard F. Outcault, which became one of the first Sunday supplement
comic strips in an American newspaper although its graphical layout had already been thoroughly established in
political and other entertainment
cartoons. The Yellow Kid was a bald, snaggle-toothed child with a goofy grin in a yellow nightshirt who hung around in a ghetto alley filled with equally odd characters, mostly other children. The kid wontedly spoke in a ragged, peculiar
ghetto argot printed on his shirt, a device meant to lampoon advertising
billboards.
Publication
Outcault drew four black and white, highly detailed single panel
Hogan's Alley cartoons for
Truth magazine in 1894 and 1895. The character which would later become the Yellow Kid had a minor supporting role in these panels. The fourth cartoon,
Fourth Ward Brownies, was reprinted on
17 February 1895 in
Joseph Pulitzer's
New York World where Outcault worked as a
technical drawing artist. The
World published a new
Hogan's Alley cartoon less than a month later and this was followed by the strip's first color printing on
5 May 1895.
Hogan's Alley gradually became a full page Sunday colour cartoon with the Yellow Kid as its lead character, which was also appearing several times a week. The strip has been described as "...a turn-of-the-century theater of the city, in which class and racial tensions of the new urban, consumerist environment were acted out by a mischievous group of
New York City kids from the wrong side of the tracks." The Yellow Kid's head was drawn wholly shaved as if having been recently ridden of
lice, a common sight among children in New York's tenement ghettos at the time. His nightshirt, a hand-me-down from an older sister, was white or pale blue in the first colour strips. The Yellow Kid's image was an early example of lucrative merchandizing and appeared on mass market retail objects in the greater New York City area such as "billboards, buttons, cigarette packs, cigars, cracker tins, ladies’ fans, matchbooks, postcards, chewing gum cards, toys, whiskey and many other products."
In 1896 Outcault was hired away at a much higher salary to
William Randolph Hearst's
New York Journal American where he drew the Yellow Kid in a new full page colour strip which was significantly violent and even vulgar compared to his first panels for
Truth magazine. Pulitzer, who had retained the copyright to
Hogan's Alley, hired
George Luks to continue drawing the original (and now less popular) version of the strip for the
World and hence the Yellow Kid appeared simultaneously in two competing papers for about a year. Outcault's new Yellow Kid strip at the
Journal American had three names, each lasting no more than four months:
With the Yellow Kid's merchandizing success as an advertising icon the strip came to represent the crass commercial world it had originally lampooned and publication of both versions stopped abruptly after only three years in early 1898, as circulation wars between the rival papers dwindled. Moreover, Outcault may have lost interest in the character when he realized he couldn't retain exclusive commercial control over it. The Yellow Kid's last appearance is most often noted as
23 January 1898 in a strip about
hair tonic. On
1 May 1898 the character was featured in a rather satirical cartoon called
Casey Corner Kids Dime Museum but he was drawn ironically, as a bearded, balding old man wearing a green nightshirt which bore the words,
Gosh I've growed old in making dis collection.
The two newspapers which ran the Yellow Kid, Pulitzer's
World and Hearst's
Journal American, quickly became known as the
yellow kid papers. This was contracted to the
yellow papers and the term
yellow kid journalism was at last shortened to
yellow journalism, describing the two newspapers' editorial practices of taking (sometimes even fictionalized) sensationalism and profit as priorities in journalism.
In a 1902 interview Outcault remarked, "The Yellow Kid wasn't an individual but a type. When I used to go about the slums on newspaper assignments I'd encounter him often, wandering out of doorways or sitting down on dirty doorsteps. I always loved the Kid. He had a sweet character and a sunny disposition, and was generous to a fault. Malice, envy or selfishness were not traits of his, and he never lost his temper."
The Yellow Kid appeared now and then in Outcault's later cartoon strips, most notably
Buster Brown.
Word balloons
Word balloons containing characters' speech had appeared in political cartoons since at least the 18th century, including some published by
Benjamin Franklin. Their origins can be traced back to speech scrolls, painted ribbons of paper which trailed from the mouths of speaking subjects, depicting their words. These were in common European use by the early 16th century and similar devices had appeared in
Mayan art between 600 and 900 CE. Outcault's word balloons in the Yellow Kid influenced their basic appearance and use in subsequent newspaper comic strips and
comic books.
Marvel comics
In the early 21st century the Yellow Kid appeared as a "Wonder" (Modern Wonder of the World) in Issue 27 of the Marvel Comic book
Runaways.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Yellow Kid'.
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