Richard Outcault & The Yellow Kid
Introduction:
Waking up on a Sunday morning to a just-poured bowl of cereal and a brand new page of comics is a cherished and shared experience of many American children. Since 1892, colored comics have become increasingly popular and largely increased newspaper circulation. While not the first colored comic to appear on the printed page, Richard Outcault’s Yellow Kid made major waves in the world of journalism from the early days of the cartoon to the Spanish-American War.
Artist Biography:
Richard Fenton Outcault, born in Ohio in 1863, got his creative, professional start at McMicken University School of Design in Ohio, studying art (Canemaker). Post-graduation, Outcault was hired as a traveling technical illustrator at the Thomas Edison Laboratories in New Jersey, and eventually settled in New York a few years later as a freelancer (Canemaker).
Inspired by the hustle and bustle of New York, Outcault “sold his first satirical portfolio of humorous observations of tough street kids and immigrant ragamuffins to the humor magazine, Truth” in the early 1890s (Canemaker). He also contributed technical drawings to Street Railway Journal and Electric World at the time (Canemaker).
Early Days of the Yellow Kid:
The New York World, under the advisement of Joseph Pulitzer, had been publishing black and white comics since 1889. Three years later, on June 23, 1892, the Chicago Inter-Ocean printed the first-ever newspaper “with a full-color cover and back page” (Harvey). Months later, Charles Saalburg created The Ting Lings, a colored, single-panel cartoon that is regarded as the first of its kind (Harvey).
After seeing the Inter-Ocean’s colored supplement, Pulitzer bought the same four-color rotary printing press used by the Inter-Ocean and began producing a colored Sunday supplement in 1893 (Harvey). Merrill Goddard, Pulitzer’s Sunday Editor then hired Richard Outcault to create colored comics for The World (Harvey).
“Outcault did his first original work for The World with a full-page, six-panel comic strip about “Uncle Eben’s Ignorance of the City,” published September 16, 1894,” according to The Comics Journal.
For the following year, Outcault produced comics surrounding either work African-American children living in imaginary cities or Irish children living in New York City tenements (Harvey). Mikey Dugan, one of Outcault’s cartoons, a bald, buck-toothed boy dressed in a yellow nightgown, won the hearts of readers by often mocking society or politics as a whole (Domsch).
The so-called Yellow Kid was popularized as the main character in Outcault’s Hogan’s Alley series, which became a regular Sunday color cartoon in The World in 1895 (Domsch).
The Birth of Yellow Journalism:
Circulation of The World dramatically increased the year Pulitzer published his first colored comic supplement, much to Willaim Randolph Hearst’s chagrin.
After purchasing a color press in 1896, the year following Outcault’s major success at The World, Hearst effectively poached Outcault, along with the Yellow Kid, from Pulitzer by way of offering a much higher salary.
Outcault, with his rising popularity in mind, requested a copywrite notice for the Yellow Kid, as seen below, to guarantee that no one could copy his money-making figure.
Unfortunately for Outcault and Hearst, due to irregularities in his application, the copyright attempt failed, allowing Pulitzer to hired a new cartoonist, George Luks, to continue drawing the Yellow Kid for The World (Harvey). For the following year, the two papers, Hearst’s New York Journal American and Pulitzer’s New York World, simultaneously published comics featuring the Yellow Kid (Harvey).
This back and forth between the papers, more specifically the newspaper owners, became what is known as “yellow journalism” (Canemaker). Increased newspaper sales became the name of the game and sensationalist headlines did the trick (Canemaker). Stories included gross exaggerations of the truth, melodrama and romance, all with the goal of greater circulation in mind (Canemaker).
The Spanish American War:
The feud between Hearst and Pulitzer is often pointed to as a primary cause of the Spanish-American War. Sensationalism and inaccurate coverage and claims surrounding Spanish cruelties in Cuba were at an all-time high and fueled the public’s passion for war (Canemaker).
Following the sinking of the USS Maine on February 15, 1898, in Havana, Cuba, Hearst published an article with the heading “The War Ship Maine was Split in Two by an Enemy’s Secret Infernal Machine” (Hernon). As one may assume, after reading such a headline, while not yet confirmed, many Americans wanted to get involved (Hernon). U.S. troops were sent to Cuba on June 22, 1898, just four months later (Hernon).
For years after the war, it was not proven just why the ship sank.
In 1974, Admiral Hyman G. Rickover began an investigation into the sinking of the USS Maine and found that “there was stronger evidence that the explosion of Maine was caused by an internal coal fire” rather than the Spanish, as established in Ian Hernon’s America’s Forgotten Wars.
While now widely regarded as a frowned-upon time in journalism and not wholly to blame for involvement in the war, yellow journalism, which stemmed from the introduction of colored cartoons, lead to an increased global reach of the United States and newspaper readership in general (Harvey).
The Yellow Kid Fades Away:
Publication of the Yellow Kid slowed just before the start of the Spanish-American War, with its last appearance being a cartoon printed in the January 23, 1989 edition of The New York Journal (Canemaker). Mickey Dugan would sporadically appear in Outcault's later work, most commonly a series titled Buster Brown, but wouldn't regain its late 1890s popularity (Harvey).
Outcault eventually retired from newspapers and died on Sept. 25, 1928 (Harvey).
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Sources:
Research:
Canemaker, John. “The Kid From Hogan’s Alley .” The New York Times, 17 Dec. 1995, p. 10. TimesMachine, https://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/17/books/the-kid-from-hogan-s-alley.html. Accessed 28 Feb. 2022.
Domsch, Sebastian, et al. Handbook of Comics and Graphic Narratives, De Gruyter, Berlin, 2021. Accessed 28 Feb. 2022.
Harvey, R. C. “Outcault, Goddard, the Comics, and the Yellow Kid.” The Comics Journal, 9 June 2016, ihttps://web.archive.org/web/20160612223437/http://www.tcj.com/outcault-goddard-the-comics-and-the-yellow-kid/. Accessed 28 Feb. 2022.
Hernon, Ian. America’s Forgotten Wars: From Lord Dunmore to the Phillippines. Amberley Publishing, 2021. Accessed 3 March 2022.
Visuals:
Barritt, Leon. The Big Type War of the Yellow Kids. Washington D.C., Library of Congress, 1898. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/95508199/. Accessed 28 Feb. 2022.
Glackens, Louis M. The Yellow Press. Washington D.C., Library of Congress, 1910, https://www.loc.gov/item/2011647630/. Accessed 3 March 2022.
MacDonald, Pirie. Richard F. Outcault. Washington D.C., Library of Congress, 1905, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2002697741/. Accessed 28 Feb. 2022.
Outcault, Richard F. The Yellow Dugan Kid. Washington D.C., Library of Congress, 1896, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2016683809/. Accessed 28 Feb. 2022.
Outcault, Richard F. The Yellow Kid Invades Germany. The Ohio State University Digital Connections, 1897, https://library.osu.edu/dc/concern/generic_works/g732x4133#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&xywh=-2237%2C0%2C8073%2C2815. Accessed 3 March 2022.
