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Photo Credit: Melbirnkrant.com Picture of the character "Yellow Kid" that was an icon within comic strip history. |
The Yellow Kid was one of the first ever culturally significant comic strips that came out in 1890. The character is this comic strip is named Mickey Dugan and was created by the artist named Richard Outcault. This is only used one comic page. The Yellow Kid was significant and was born within what was referred to as a newspaper war between two forces which at this time was the New York World and the New York Journal. They were mainly fighting over viewership, readership, prices and even promotions. Eventually Hearst from New York Journal lured Richard away New York World and hired another artist to continue the strip resulting in a bunch of competing papers that were released every Sunday. This feud was not just between the companies, but you could see this take place in the comic strip itself. Both artists would actually throw questions, concerns and poked fun at one another. The comments would be about originality and ownership.
There are actually a bunch of levels to this which results in a total of three. The first one is a self reflective humorous comment on Outcualts professional move (luring them away). Then, there is commentary of a bill passed in 1896 on liquor in New York. This showcases that they were poking fun at the legal loopholes that were happening in 19th century New York City.
Yellow Kid was known for embracing the ethics and racial tensions on that era in time. The pages were extremely dialect and had a bunch of misconceptions and went against normal publicity norms much like zines do nowadays as a way to fight against mainstream media. Yellow Kid was almost the precursor to this in a way and they were also trying to represent different types of immigrant communities. This offered an interpretive openness and allowed immigrant readers to also enjoy comic strips that may not have fully grasped full English Literacy at this point in time. This reflected the middle class in New York and the certain fears that were happening in the American nation.
Outside of Yellow Kid, comics are mainly known for fantasy, fiction and have a lot of humor involved in them too. Comics recently have become a vehicle for non-fiction writing such as journalism and is now a popular genre. Comics date all the way back to the expeinrces of marginalized groups and people affected in war communities and even international audiences.
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Photo: itakehistory.com A comic strip that has an example of how Yellow Kid was used. |
Comics were there before the invention of photography and an attempt to make things easier to read visually or poke fun at something. They were originally some manifestations in the forms of prints or broadsheets that were meant to convey factual information. Illustrated media was a great way to showcase the work of print media via journalists and direct affected the infamous newspaper comic strips that we know today.Another thing to note about the history of comics within journalism is that some of them involve framing. Framing is essentially the concept of leaving certain things out in order to be able to devise to a certain group of people that you are wanting to accurately represent.
Comics have always been around as a way to document real life events that may be too complicated to explain into words and are much easily stated in a visual context. A great example of this is from the September 11th attacks. However, there is actually na argument if comic strips can be documentary at all since it is a drawing unlike a photograph. Overall, comics serve as vital pieces of information within a newspaper by being able to successfully display and address graphic narratives in a compelling sense so that the reader can fully grasp the ideologies discussed in the paper. These comics go back centuries and showcases what journalism really is about and is a gateway for visual storytelling.
Citations:
Haas, P. (n.d.). Urban America in the newspaper comic strips of the nineteenth century: Introducing the Yellow Kid.ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies. University of Florida. https://imagetextjournal.com/urban-america-in-the-newspaper-comic-strips-of-the-nineteenth-century-introducing-the-yellow-kid/
Schlichting, L., & Schmid, J. C. P. (2021). Introduction to Graphic Realities: Comics as documentary, history, and journalism. ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies, 11(1). https://imagetextjournal.com/introduction-to-graphic-realities-comics-as-documentary-history-and-journalism/
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