A comic strip is a sequence of cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st century, these have been published in newspapers and magazines, with daily horizontal strips printed in black-and-white in newspapers, while Sunday papers offered longer sequences in special color comics sections. With the advent of the internet, online comic strips began to appear as webcomics.
The Katzenjammer Kids is an American comic strip created by Rudolph Dirks in 1897 and later drawn by Harold Knerr for 35 years. It debuted on December 12, 1897, in the American Humorist, the Sunday supplement of William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal. The comic strip was turned into a stage play in 1903. It inspired several animated cartoons and was one of 20 strips included in the Comic Strip Classics series of U.S. commemorative postage stamps.
Little Nemo is a fictional character created by American cartoonist Winsor McCay. He originated in an early comic strip by McCay, Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, before receiving his own spin-off series, Little Nemo in Slumberland. The full-page weekly strip depicted Nemo having fantastic dreams that were interrupted by his awakening in the final panel. The strip is considered McCay's masterpiece for its experiments with the form of the comics page, its use of color and perspective, its timing and pacing, the size and shape of its panels, and its architectural and other details.
Yellow journalism and yellow press are American terms for journalism and associated newspapers that present little or no legitimate, well-researched news while instead using eye-catching headlines for increased sales. Techniques may include exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering, or sensationalism. By extension, the term yellow journalism came to mean stories that were emotional or exaggerated and featured topics like crime, sex or violence.
Zenas Winsor McCay was an American cartoonist and animator. He is best known for the comic strip Little Nemo and the animated film Gertie the Dinosaur (1914). For contractual reasons, he worked under the pen name Silas on the comic strip Dream of the Rarebit Fiend.
Richard Felton Outcault was an American cartoonist. He was the creator of the series The Yellow Kid and Buster Brown and is considered a key pioneer of the modern comic strip.
The New York World was a newspaper published in New York City from 1860 to 1931. The paper played a major role in the history of American newspapers as a leading national voice of the Democratic Party. From 1883 to 1911 under publisher Joseph Pulitzer, it was a pioneer in yellow journalism, capturing readers' attention with sensation, sports, sex and scandal and pushing its daily circulation to the one-million mark. It was sold in 1931 and merged into the New York World-Telegram.
Buster Brown is a comic-strip character created in 1902 by Richard F. Outcault. Adopted as the mascot of the Brown Shoe Company in 1904, Buster Brown, along with Mary Jane, and with his dog Tige, became well known to the American public in the early 20th century. The character's name was used to describe a popular style of suit for young boys, the Buster Brown suit, that reflected his outfit.
The New York Journal-American was a daily newspaper published in New York City from 1937 to 1966. The Journal-American was the product of a merger between two New York newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst: the New York American, a morning paper, and the New York Evening Journal, an afternoon paper. Both were published by Hearst from 1895 to 1937. The American and Evening Journal merged in 1937.
Rudolph Dirks was one of the earliest and most noted comic strip artists, well known for The Katzenjammer Kids.
The Sunday comics or Sunday strip is the comic strip section carried in most western newspapers. Compared to weekday comics, Sunday comics tend to be full pages and are in color. Many newspaper readers called this section the Sunday funnies, the funny papers or simply the funnies.
This is a timeline of significant events in comics prior to the 20th century.
Hogan's Alley is a magazine devoted to comic art, published on an irregular schedule since 1994 by Bull Moose Publishing in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Subtitled "the magazine of the cartoon arts", it covers comic strips, comic books, cartoons, and animation. Originally planned as a quarterly, the frequency is closer to that of an annual, with 20 issues published in 22 years.
Andrews McMeel Syndication is an American content syndicate which provides syndication in print, online and on mobile devices for a number of lifestyle and opinion columns, comic strips and cartoons and various other content. Some of its best-known products include Dear Abby, Doonesbury, Ziggy, Garfield, Ann Coulter, Richard Roeper and News of the Weird. A subsidiary of Andrews McMeel Universal, it is headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri. It was formed in 2009 and renamed in January 2017.
Truth magazine was both a weekly magazine and a monthly reader published from 1881 until 1905 in the United States. Its subtitle was "The Brightest of Weeklies".
Little Sammy Sneeze was a comic strip by American cartoonist Winsor McCay. In each episode the titular Sammy sneezed himself into an awkward or disastrous predicament. The strip ran from July 24, 1904 until December 9, 1906 in the New York Herald, where McCay was on the staff. It was McCay's first successful comic strip; he followed it with Dream of the Rarebit Fiend later in 1904, and his best-known strip Little Nemo in Slumberland in 1905.
The history of American comics began in the 19th century in mass print media, in the era of sensationalist journalism, where newspaper comics served as further entertainment for mass readership. In the 20th century, comics became an autonomous art medium and an integral part of American culture.
Charles William Saalburg (1865–1947) was an American cartoonist and illustrator who lived in San Francisco, and whose work appeared in the San Francisco Wasp and Examiner, the New York World, as well as periodicals in Paris and London. In 1894 he created The Ting Ling Kids comic strip for the Chicago Inter Ocean, which is typically considered the earliest regular American newspaper comic strip to be printed in color. As chief of the World's color department, he is also credited with giving the bright yellow color to R. F. Outcault's famous character the Yellow Kid: when in 1895 he used the Kid's characteristic oversized shirt to test a new, quick-drying yellow ink. The Yellow Kid, originally drawn with a blue shirt or in black and white, would give rise to the term "yellow journalism".
The New York World was one of the first newspapers to publish comic strips, starting around 1890, and contributed greatly to the development of the American comic strip. Notable strips that originated with the World included Richard F. Outcault's Hogan's Alley, Rudolph Dirks' The Captain and the Kids, Denys Wortman's Everyday Movies, Fritzi Ritz, Gus Mager's Hawkshaw the Detective, Victor Forsythe's Joe Jinks, and Robert Moore Brinkerhoff's Little Mary Mixup.
May 5th is National Cartoonist Day, a world-wide celebration of cartoonists and their work. The National Cartoonist Society declared the date in the 1990s to promote support for the cartooning industry, and to recognize the impact they have had on society.
