Week 3 (Pt.2) - The Comic Strip (The Yellow Kid)


In class on Thursday, I happened to stumble across a book that detailed the history and the various editorials of The Yellow Kid comic strip created by Richard F. Outcault. I was completely unfamiliar with both the character and comic at the time. Unbeknownst to me, The Yellow Kid was one of the very first comic strip characters and paved the way for modern comics through its influential storytelling techniques. After reading a little bit of the history at the beginning, I was excited to skim through the rest of the book and see what exactly was in store for me.

The first thing that caught my eye was that the comic took up almost an ENTIRE page of the New York Journal. It’s very clear that Outcault isn’t interested in sequential storytelling or using panels, but rather illustrating a current moment in time (the now). The pages consisted of absolute chaos and mayhem, almost like a look-and-find book. This was a very effective mechanism to illustrate what life was like in the setting of the comic: the slums. Rather than simply entertaining an audience like a regular old comic would, The Yellow Kid provides some pretty insightful social commentary about the world we live in almost like it fits with the newspaper page it inhabits. A lot of the scenarios I found to be very funny and quite thought-provoking. The comic was also very influential in the establishment of speech bubbles, which are used via writing on billboards, signs, and the main character’s shirt.

I must say that I found this comic to be a very interesting read. It fascinated me as I was flipping each page to know that this was where the medium started. I had a very fun time learning about the history and styles of comics this week and I sure can’t wait to pick up some more in my spare time.

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