Comic Strips

The Popularization of Comic Strips

In an effort to boost sales and circulation, 19th-century American newspapers and magazines began including weekly supplementary material, such as the American Humorist supplement published in W. R. Hearst's New York Journal in the 1890s. The popularization of comic strips began with The Yellow Kid, by Richard Felton Outcault, widely credited as the first serial newspaper comic strip and acknowledged for initiating the crucial development away from text as merely an embellishment to art and toward a cultivation of comic dialogue reflecting textual and graphical harmony.

By the early 1900s, comic strips were featured in daily newspapers, creating a forum for continuous narrative. By the 1930s, weekday black-and-white comic strips were complemented with Sunday edition full color comic strip pages, introducing a format that is maintained today around the world.

The Yellow Kid (Micky Dugan), a small, toothless orphan, was the lead character in the comic strip Hogan's Alley that was introduced in 1895. The Kid, wearing an oversized yellow nightshirt with the words “Gee dat must be my conscience coming back” is standing in a parlor, smoking a cigar and drinking absinthe or some other alcoholic beverage. A black cat rubs against his legs and, in the background, the devil pokes his head between the curtains. The strip, drawn by Richard Felton Outcault, is widely considered the beginning of the U.S. comic strip tradition. First appearing in Joseph Pulitzer's New York World, it was later published in William Randolph Hearst's NewYork Journal. The strip became a national sensation through heavy licensing activity (including appearances in advertising and on Broadway) and through the national distribution of Hearst's Sunday humor section.

Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, DC.

The combination of serial and syndicated publication, the development of episodic narrative, and the proliferation of comic strips proved conducive to dedicated following and collecting, which ultimately [Page 156]led to the comic book as the premier form of comic strip consumption and established the comic strip as a literary genre.

Key Features of Comic Strips

Comic strips can generally be defined as illustrations arranged sequentially, each typically contained within a square or rectangular frame known as a panel, and accompanied by text in the form of captions, dialogue, or a combination of the two to create a humorous narrative. However, not all comic strips are multipaneled, serial, or episodic in nature, nor can they all be rightly understood as comical. Nevertheless, comic strip serves as the most common generic term to refer to a genre characterized by panel gag comics (see below), but it also includes superhero comics such as Superman, adventure comics such as Popeye, dramatic comics such as Mary Worth, or political or editorial comics such as Doonesbury. Closely related to comic strips are graphic novels, while cultural variations include Japanese manga and Franco-Belgian bandes-dessinées, the best known of which include The Adventures of Tintin and Astérix.

...