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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Yellow Kid-Hully Gee!, November 23, 2005
I have had a long fascination for Richard F.Outcault's seriously strange creation "Mickey Dugan",alias the "Yellow Kid",but only with the publication of this book did I finally see the entire original run of Outcault's cartoons from the New York newspapers.Cited as the first real "comic strip" character,the Kid's initial appearances were in full page color drawings-huge single panels featuring Mickey and his urchin set,denizens of the New York tenements,always engaged in some kind of lively(sometimes illegal)activity-a parody of political meetings,sports,the theater,the doings of freemasons etc.Later Outcault also drew the Kid in the now familiar "strip cartoon" format.The Yellow Kid originally appeared in the sunday comic supplement to Joseph Pulitzer's "New York World" in panels titled "Hogan's Alley".The character soon became a major player in the circulation war between Pulitzer and his brash rival (fresh from California),W.R.Hearst,owner/editor of the "New York Journal",who nabbed Outcault from the "World" just as the Kid was becoming a seriously major craze in 1896(the "World" continued the character by another artist,George Luks).The "Journal" drawings were themselves accompanied by a text story expanding on the cartoon,but often only marginally related to it,and usually rather flatly written-not by Outcault,but most frequently by Edward W.Townsend,creator of the popular tales about Bowery boy man-servant "Chimmie Fadden".
This book under review,was issued originally in 1995,to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Kid's first appearance.It is an invaluable collection,reproducing-for the first time since the 1890s-not only all of Oucault's Kid pages and strips from the "World" and the "Journal",but also a wide selection of his appearances in other parts of the papers in black and white drawings with texts accompanying them(the Kid's diary,adventures abroad,his involvement in the 1898 war with Spain etc).Bill Blackbeard provides an exhaustive detailed commentary on the background to the character,examining his various newspaper appearances and providing a lot of information about the Yellow Kid as an 1890s "celebrity",an advertizing bonanza(Mickey sold everything-he even had his own brand of cigarettes!),stage star,and general all round popular culture phenomenon.The Kid's huge popularity becomes more remarkable when one considers that he only survived as a newspaper cartoon character for about 3 years!My only gripes about Blackbeard's commentaries are that he can sometimes be a little sniffily "pc" in looking back on a very different era,and I would have liked to know more about Outcault the man(but is much known anyway?)-that aside they are excellent,and the book includes a superb bibliography too.The material reproduced so well here is fascinating,especially to anyone who loves the 1890s.In the teeming,chaotic full page cartoons,we dive back into a distant,violent anarchic world-that of the tenement Irish in New York during the "mauve" decade-a place Jacob Riis chronicled in photographs,but here the grimness of that existence is given its own wild,disreputable,but undeniably appealing humor-the slums leering out at us and saying(in their own unique way)-"Say!Life is real-and ain't we somethin'!".
The quality of Outcault's drawing is very high,especially in the "classic" period of 1896/7.Comments from the characters appear everywhere,surrealistically placed on hoardings,on walls and fences and most famously on Mickey Dugan's ochre nightshirt-mostly written in the archaic "hully gee-dis is de main guy" slanguage of 1890's New York icons like Chuck Connors,Steve Brodie and Chimmie Fadden-but Outcault's words transcend their origins-he is a master of clever phrasing when creating the nose thumbing patois of the Yellow Kid's Hogan's Alley and McFadden's Flats.
When he started out,Mickey really was a baby,just a toddler,lurking in some part of the picture-one among many in a recurring cast of tenement dwellers.But gradually he turned into the star,and in the process transformed into a bald,jug eared adolescent,strangely still wearing a baby's nightshirt-grinning knowingly out at the world-the wiseguy who was not only lord in his own slum,at one with its anarchic values and sensibilities,but a sharpee who could transpose them into whichever arena he and his accompanying tenement crowd moved-even when mixing with all manner of foreigners while touring the globe(in the series from 1897 "Round the World with the Yellow Kid").
Richard Outcault soon turned to other comic creations-perhaps the Kid and his pals were basically too disreputable and nihilistic for a man coming to want greater "respectability".Even the Kid's adventures in the "Journal" became tamer,the humor gradually abandoning that savage edge found in cartoons like the violent 1896 "World" panel "What they did to the dog-catcher in Hogan's Alley"-the Kid and his pals became cuter,less dangerous.Outcault's later strip character,the thoroughly middle class "Buster Brown" even eclipsed Mickey Dugan in popularity,and the cartoon lasted far longer than the one about the kid in the yellow nightshirt.Buster's world,his mischief accompanied by little homilies to set everything right,was a far cry from the madcap slum tenements Mickey Dugan and his cohorts sprang from-though the Kid himself did wander inexplicably into "Buster Brown" a few times(reproduced here)-a half remembered phantom from the seemy side of "Boss" Croker's New York.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Thorough exam for the little fella, November 20, 2008
This review is from: R.F. Outcault's the Yellow Kid: A Centennial Celebration of the Kid Who Started the Comics (Paperback)
This is a thorough exam for the little fella, with a real opportunity to "see" the thinking of the cartoonist as it evolved from week to week. By cross-referencing other sources, you can even see changes from day to day. Fer example, you can compare the Library of Congress pre-publication image of a poor neighborhood football game, http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/artwood/images/03344r.jpg, with the final one actually published, here Plate 48. A wonderful girl jogger (1896!) from Vassar disappears, to be replaced by an Indian athlete from the Carlisle Indian School (no, not Jim Thorpe!), and someone complaining about newspaper circulation at the strip Outcault had left. The "repeat" stock characters of the Kid's Goat, Dog, Cat, and Parrot (the Monk-ey being added two weeks later) and his sister?/sometimes girlfriend? with the round hat are kept, along with the slutty Riccadonna sisters (less slutty in the published version, but with their backs showing so Outcault could add jokes about halfback, quarterback, etc.). There is the usual "late Yellow Kid" discussion of what to call what the Yellow Kid wears; here it is either a sweater or a dress. Self-promotion is, as usual, obvious, with perhaps 10 references in addition to the Kid himself to the word "Yellow" or some variant.
For those familiar with Outcault, one will realize that the Kid's monkey, cat and dog will re-appear as his next cartoon character's monkey, cat and dog (Mose), while the goat and parrot there make "cameo" appearances.
The text is a bit heavy, and fails to note that the Yellow Kid rarely shows any evolution in character, unlike both Pore Lil Mose and, after that, Buster Brown, where the artist takes the opposite tact and shows them learning something between the beginning of each strip and its end. That profound evolution in story-telling and character development between the Yellow Kid and Outcault's subsequent creations is completely missed.
The important thing here is the ability to look into the mind of an artist.
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