I was so excited to bump into this website with digitized copies of The Yellow Kid. It’s one of those comics that you hear about all the time and never get to reading. I remember reading a lot about it in books about the history of comics and even heard a lot of amusing stories about the ruckus it created in the media world, but it is only in the last week that I have been able to see a good amount of the strips and appreciate it for what it really is.

In the 1800s, comics were suddenly becoming a popular form of entertainment. With the advancement of technology, newspapers and magazines were able to publish quality illustrations and comics soon became the differentiating factor that set the standard by which print material was being judged.

Initially these strips were modest affairs, mostly in black and white appearing in the bottom of the page, but by the end of the century, newspapers began to publish the “Sunday Funnies” supplement that soon became a thriving genre.

While most of the strips were moderately popular with no prize-winning artists, there was one that suddenly emerged as a leading light by the end of the century. It is Richard Outcault’s Hogan’s Alley (1895-1897), which was America’s first commercially successful newspaper comic strip that first appeared in the Truth magazine, and later in Joseph Pulitzer’s newspaper called The New York World. It was the leading light for a lot of reasons, some of which had very little to do with comics- the medium.

Hogan’s Alley may not be a "comic" in the strict sense of the word, as it had only one large attractive illustration, produced in color, that took up a full page. But, the term comic in those days meant "being part of the newspaper" and not "being comical" and therefore fit the description perfectly. Moreover, it was the one to have influenced the use of word balloons in comics. To be precise, even though Outcault was not the first to combine bubbles and a multi-image narrative, and that word balloons had been used since Mayan art in 600 CE, the popularity of Hogan’s Alley made comics particularly recognizable by their use of word balloons and became the driving force of the form.

Hogan's Alley is about the New York tenement ghettos, whose inhabitants are mostly Irish immigrants. The children in the Alley are troublemakers who are coarse and crass, but possess a charming innocence that allows them to comment unreservedly on the injustices and hypocrisy they perceive in the city dwellers. As Outcault took Hogan’s Alley to different newspapers, the kids became less vulgar or more, less critical or more, depending on the audience and their capacity to take in Outcault’s critic of the class and racial tensions of New York.

Hogan’s Alley had a kid by the name of Mickey Dugan, with huge ears, a bald head, and a yellow nightshirt with dialogues written on them, who appeared every now and then in a small role. He was an insignificant character in the early strips, but soon emerged as a lead character as people began to refer to him as The Yellow Kid, because of his distinct looks.


Around 1896, William Hearst, the arch-rival of Pulitzer, lured Richard Outcault to join his company and began to publish
Hogan’s Alley in his newspaper. This prompted Pulitzer to sue Hearst and Outcault and the judge ruled that Hogan’s Alley belonged to Pulitzer, but that Outcault could take The Yellow Kid, wherever he liked. Thus, Outcault drew for Hearst’s The Yellow Kid and Pulitzer hired George Luks to draw for Hogan’s Alley, creating two rivaling strips with the same theme for two different newspapers. Eventually, the two rivals gave in and Hogan’s Alley came to be known as The Yellow Kid even in Pulitzer’s newspaper as it was the more popular one.

The rivalry of the two leading newspapers and their reputation for editorializing news for profit became so popular that during the Spanish American War, the sensational news reporting style, where news of the war became more and more unreliable came to be known as “yellow journalism” (today’s infotainment).

The Yellow Kid was the first comic to be heavily merchandised with him appearing in everything from toys to whiskey bottles to ladies fans to cigarette packs and hundreds of other products and Mickey Dugan began to make guest appearances in other comic strips as well. Eventually with the popularity of other comic strips, Hearst and Pulitzer began to run an array of comic strips in one page instead of dedicating a full page to The Yellow Kid. Outcault too lost interest in the character when he learnt that he had no exclusive commercial control over it. However, both newspapers continued to be called The Yellow Kid papers.

Despite the sad end of The Yellow Kid, and it’s very short life, it changed the comic landscape forever. Just as it left, a fierce circulation war began with hundreds of strips making their appearance in papers all over the country. Press barons were fighting hard to retain cartoonists, but the demand was obviously greater than the supply. This led to the emergence of strip syndicates, who collected works of cartoonists and distributed them to different newspapers all over the country.
Three names of cartoonists are mentioned by historians as being the most highly syndicated: Windsor McCay, Lyonel Feininger and George Herriman. It seems, Outcault left the party a tad too soon!