Claim for copyright on The Yellow Dugan Kid

The Yellow Kid (Mickey Dugan) is an American

comic strip A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...

character that appeared from 1895 to 1898 in

Joseph Pulitzer Joseph Pulitzer ( ; born Pulitzer József, ; April 10, 1847 – October 29, 1911) was a Hungarian-American politician and newspaper publisher of the ''St. Louis Post-Dispatch'' and the ''New York World''. He became a leading national figure in ...

's ''

New York World The ''New York World'' was a newspaper published in New York City from 1860 until 1931. The paper played a major role in the history of American newspapers. It was a leading national voice of the Democratic Party. From 1883 to 1911 under publi ...

'', and later

William Randolph Hearst William Randolph Hearst Sr. (; April 29, 1863 – August 14, 1951) was an American businessman, newspaper publisher, and politician known for developing the nation's largest newspaper chain and media company, Hearst Communications. His flamboya ...

's ''

New York Journal :''Includes coverage of New York Journal-American and its predecessors New York Journal, The Journal, New York American and New York Evening Journal'' The ''New York Journal-American'' was a daily newspaper published in New York City from 1937 t ...

''. Created and drawn by

Richard F. Outcault Richard Felton Outcault (; January 14, 1863 – September 25, 1928) was an American cartoonist. He was the creator of the series ''The Yellow Kid'' and ''Buster Brown'' and is considered a key pioneer of the modern comic strip. Life and career ...

in the comic strip ''Hogan's Alley'' (and later under other names as well), it was one of the first Sunday supplement comic strips in an American newspaper, although its graphical layout had already been thoroughly established in

political Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies ...

and other, purely-for-entertainment

cartoons A cartoon is a type of visual art that is typically drawn, frequently animated, in an unrealistic or semi-realistic style. The specific meaning has evolved over time, but the modern usage usually refers to either: an image or series of images ...

.Wood, Mary (2004)
''The Yellow Kid on paper and stage, Contemporary illustrations''
Retrieved October 17, 2007. Outcault's use of

word balloon Speech balloons (also speech bubbles, dialogue balloons, or word balloons) are a graphic convention used most commonly in comic books, comics, and cartoons to allow words (and much less often, pictures) to be understood as representing a char ...

s in the ''Yellow Kid'' influenced the basic appearance and use of balloons in subsequent newspaper comic strips and

comic book A comic book, also called comicbook, comic magazine or (in the United Kingdom and Ireland) simply comic, is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are of ...

s. The cartoon was created to help educate the wealthy readers of the newspapers in which the comic strip appeared, showing them something of what life was like for people living in poverty. Outcault's aim was to make these wealthy readers more sympathetic to the plight of the poor, rather than judging them, and assuming they deserved to be in poverty. ''The Yellow Kid'' is also famous for its connection to the coining of the term "

yellow journalism Yellow journalism and yellow press are American terms for journalism and associated newspapers that present little or no legitimate, well-researched news while instead using eye-catching headlines for increased sales. Techniques may include e ...

". The idea of "yellow journalism" referred to stories which were sensationalized for the sake of selling papers, and was so named after the "Yellow Kid" cartoons. Although a cartoon, Outcault's work aimed its humor and social commentary at Pulitzer's adult readership. 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 New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

kids from the wrong side of the tracks".

Character

The Yellow Kid was a bald, snaggle-toothed barefoot boy who wore an oversized yellow nightshirt and hung around in a

slum A slum is a highly populated urban residential area consisting of densely packed housing units of weak build quality and often associated with poverty. The infrastructure in slums is often deteriorated or incomplete, and they are primarily inh ...

alley typical of certain areas of squalor that existed in late 19th-century New York City. Hogan's Alley was filled with equally odd characters, mostly other children. With a goofy grin, the Kid habitually spoke in a ragged, peculiar

slang Slang is vocabulary (words, phrases, and linguistic usages) of an informal register, common in spoken conversation but avoided in formal writing. It also sometimes refers to the language generally exclusive to the members of particular in-gro ...

, which was printed on his shirt, a device meant to lampoon advertising

billboards A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...

. The Yellow Kid's head was drawn wholly shaved as if having been recently ridden of

lice Louse ( : lice) is the common name for any member of the clade Phthiraptera, which contains nearly 5,000 species of wingless parasitic insects. Phthiraptera has variously been recognized as an order, infraorder, or a parvorder, as a result o ...

, a common sight among children in New York's

tenement A tenement is a type of building shared by multiple dwellings, typically with flats or apartments on each floor and with shared entrance stairway access. They are common on the British Isles, particularly in Scotland. In the medieval Old Town, i ...

ghettos at the time. His nightshirt, a hand-me-down from an older sister, was white or pale blue in the first color strips.

Publication history

A May 1895 ''New York World'' appearance of the character (lower right, above Outcault's signature) who, here, is not yet wearing yellow. The character who would later become the Yellow Kid first appeared on the scene in a minor supporting role in a cartoon panel published in ''

Truth Truth is the property of being in accord with fact or reality.Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionarytruth 2005 In everyday language, truth is typically ascribed to things that aim to represent reality or otherwise correspond to it, such as beliefs ...

'' magazine in 1894 and 1895. The four different black-and-white single panel cartoons were deemed popular, and one of them, ''Fourth Ward Brownies'', was reprinted on 17 February 1895 in

's ''

'', where Outcault worked as a

technical drawing Technical drawing, drafting or drawing, is the act and Academic discipline, discipline of composing Plan (drawing), drawings that Visual communication, visually communicate how something functions or is constructed. Technical drawing is essent ...

artist. The ''World'' published another, newer ''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 color cartoon with the Yellow Kid (who was also appearing several times a week) as its lead character. In 1896 Outcault was hired away at a much higher salary to

's ''

New York Journal American :''Includes coverage of New York Journal-American and its predecessors New York Journal, The Journal, New York American and New York Evening Journal'' The ''New York Journal-American'' was a daily newspaper published in New York City from 1937 t ...

'' where he drew the Yellow Kid in a new full-page color strip which was significantly violent and even vulgar compared to his first panels for ''Truth'' magazine. Because Outcault failed in his attempt to copyright the Yellow Kid, Pulitzer was able to hire

George Luks George Benjamin Luks (August 13, 1867 – October 29, 1933) was an American artist, identified with the aggressively realistic Ashcan School of American painting. After travelling and studying in Europe, Luks worked as a newspaper illustrator a ...

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.Gordon, Ian (1998). ''Comic Strips and Consumer Culture'', pp. 31–32. Retrieved on 2013-07-09 fro

/ref> Luks's version of the Yellow Kid introduced a pair of twins, Alex and George, also dressed in yellow nightshirts. Outcault produced three subsequent series of Yellow Kid strips at the ''Journal American'', each lasting no more than four months: * ''McFadden's Row of Flats'' (18 October 1896 – 10 January 1897) * ''Around the World with the Yellow Kid'' – a strip that sent the Kid on a world tour in the manner of

Nellie Bly Elizabeth Cochran Seaman (born Elizabeth Jane Cochran; May 5, 1864 – January 27, 1922), better known by her pen name Nellie Bly, was an American journalist, industrialist, inventor, and charity worker who was widely known for her record-breaki ...

(17 January – 30 May 1897) * A half-page strip which eventually adopted the title ''Ryan's Arcade'' (28 September 1897 – 23 January 1898).''The Yellow Kid''
. The

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

Libraries. Retrieved 1 December 2007 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 could not 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 Hair is a protein filament that grows from follicles found in the dermis. Hair is one of the defining characteristics of mammals. The human body, apart from areas of glabrous skin, is covered in follicles which produce thick terminal and fine ...

. On 1 May 1898, the character was featured in a rather satirical cartoon called ''Casey Corner Kids Dime Museum'' but he was drawn as a bearded, balding old man wearing a green nightshirt which bore the words: "Gosh I've growed old in making dis collection." The Yellow Kid appeared sporadically in Outcault's later cartoon strips, most notably ''

Buster Brown Buster Brown is a comic-strip character created in 1902 by Richard F. Outcault. Adopted as the mascot of the Brown Shoe Company in 1904, Buster Brown, along with Mary Jane, and with his dog Tige, became well known to the United States of America ...

''.Wood, Mary (2004)
"Over the Bounding Main (Buster Brown Postcard)"
R. F. Outcault Society's Yellow Kid Site. 10 December 2003. Retrieved October 17, 2007.

Yellow journalism

The two newspapers that 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 ''

'', describing the two newspapers' editorial practices of taking (sometimes even fictionalized) sensationalism and profit as priorities in journalism.

Merchandising

The Yellow Kid's image was an early example of lucrative merchandising 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".Wallace, Derek (18 July 2005). ''The Yellow Kid''. Virtue Magazine, Volume 1, Issue 14, 18 July 2005. Retrieved on 2007-10-16 fro
Virtuemag.org
With the Yellow Kid's merchandising success as an advertising icon, the strip came to represent the crass commercial world it had originally lampooned.

Other versions

Entertainment entrepreneur

Gus Hill Gus Hill (22 February 1858 – 20 April 1937) was an American vaudeville performer who juggled Indian clubs. He later became a burlesque and vaudeville entrepreneur. Hill was one of the founders of the Columbia Amusement Company, an association o ...

staged vaudeville plays based on the comic strip. His version of ''McFadden's Flats'' was made into films in 1927 and 1935. The Yellow Kid made an appearance in the

Marvel Universe The Marvel Universe is a fictional shared universe where the stories in most American comic book titles and other media published by Marvel Comics take place. Super-teams such as the Avengers, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, the Guardians of ...

in the

Joss Whedon Joseph Hill Whedon (; born June 23, 1964) is an American filmmaker, composer, and comic book writer. He is the founder of Mutant Enemy Productions, co-founder of Bellwether Pictures, and is best known as the creator of several television series: ...

-written '' Runaways'' story (volume 2, issue 27). In this take on the character, he exhibits superhuman powers. In the ''

Ziggy Ziggy is a masculine given name, often a diminutive form (hypocorism) of Zigmunt and other names. It is also a nickname. Notable people with the name include: Nickname or hypocorism * Ezekiel Ansah (born 1989), National Football League pla ...

'' of 16 February 1990, Ziggy points to a smiling old man seated next to him on a park bench and says, "No kidding... You were The Yellow Kid!"

Legacy

The Yellow Kid Awards are Italian comics awards presented by the International Cartoonists Exhibition"Non-American Awards"
Hahn Library Comic Book Awards Almanac. Retrieved 22 December 2015. and distributed at the annual Italian comic book and gaming convention

Lucca Comics & Games Lucca Comics & Games is an annual Comic book convention, comic book and gaming convention in Lucca, Italy, traditionally held at the end of October, in conjunction with All Saints' Day. It is the largest comics festival in Europe, and the second ...

References

External links

Radio piece detailing the story behind the Yellow Kid, particularly his role in commercial advertisingThe Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum: Digital album of 88 Yellow Kid tearsheets from the San Francisco Academy of Comic Art Collection

* ttp://www.marklansdown.com/pinbacks/pages/yellowkid.html Yellow Kid Pinbacks {{DEFAULTSORT:Yellow Kid Comics characters introduced in 1894 American comic strips Child characters in comics Male characters in comics Comic strips started in the 1890s 1890s comics Comic strips ended in the 1890s Comics adapted into plays American comics characters Fictional American people Gag-a-day comics Public domain comics

Character

Publication history

Yellow journalism

Merchandising

Other versions

Legacy

See also

References

External links