Left:

R. F. Outcault’s The Yellow Kid: A Centennial Celebration of the Kid Who Started the Comics. 1995. Northampton, MA: Kitchen Sink Press. [The photos on this site have been copied from this book to illustrate my lectures in journalism history.]

Yellow Kid--1894

Richard Felton Outcault drew “funny pictures” for NY’s Truth magazine in June 1894. Pulitzer’s World reprinted the “Yellow Kid” cartoon in February 1895. It would appear weekly, often taking one full page, under the series “Hogan’s Alley.”

The Yellow kid had a bald head, huge ears, and a bright yellow night shirt with dialog written on it. He has no name originally, although later he was named Mickey Dugan. People knew him as the Yellow Kid. He and his friends were involved in simple neighborhood plots and spoke kid and immigrant ENGLISH.

In 1896 Hearst’s Journal hired Outcault away from Pulitzer and when he started drawing Hogan’s Alley there, Pulitzer sued. The judge said the Yellow Kid was Outcault’s but Hogan’s Alley was Pulitzer’s.  Outcault continued in the Journal with “McFadden’s Row of Flats” and the World hired George Luks to continue “Hogan’s Alley.” [Right: 1995 USPS stamp series.)