Robert Fenton Outcault This is Me

 Web References

1. 1. Collectibles Make Kitchens Enjoyable

   www.americanantiquities.com/ar - [Cached]

   Published on: 2/19/2003   Last Visited: 12/1/2003

   Robert Fenton Outcault has been called the Father of the American Sunday Comics. He created The Yellow Kid, a series of pictures depicting life in New York City as residents saw it, presented in a manner to make readers laugh. The character increased sales of the newspapers in which he appeared, and The Yellow Kid also later became the first comic character to be successfully merchandised.
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   Outcault soon was appointed the official artist of Edison's traveling exhibit, and was sent to Paris for the World's Fair. Returning to the United States in 1890, Outcault worked for Electrical World magazine, owned by one of Edison's friends.
   
   In 1894 Outcault began free-lancing jokes and cartoons for some of the weekly humor magazines, like Truth, that catered to New York's rich and famous. What he drew wasn't a comic strip, as we know it today, but single frames with captions. His comic work first appeared in Joseph Pulitzer's New York World newspaper, and was not then known as The Yellow Kid, but Hogan's Alley, a name that appeared on a street sign in one of the early cartoons.
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   In 1896 Hearst lured Outcault, who by then had joined the staff at World, away along with his entire Sunday staff by promising a much higher salary.
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   Because of a court decision, Pulitzer was forced to have someone else, George B. Luks, draw the Yellow Kid in Hogan's Alley for World, and Outcault continued at Hearst's New York Journal, changing the neighborhood to McFadden's Row of Flats.
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   In 1898 Outcault returned to Pulitzer's World where he began creating a number of other comics. The Yellow Kid's popularity began waning as Outcault focused on new comics. When his contract ended, Outcault stopped drawing the Yellow Kid. In 1898 Outcault wrote, "… I suppose I have myself made twenty thousand Yellow Kids, and when the million buttons, the innumerable toys and cigarette boxes and labels and whatnots are taken into consideration, some idea can be gleaned of how tired I am of him."
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   In 1904 Outcault traveled to the St. Louis World's Fair where he sold licenses to the Buster Brown image. John Bush, a young sales executive with the Brown Shoe Company saw the potential of the Buster Brown name as a children's shoe trademark and persuaded the company to purchase rights to the name from Outcault.
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   In 1906 Outcault took his Buster Brown again to the Hearst papers.
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   Outcault from then on produced his strip without using the Buster Brown name in the title, and the Herald continued with the original strip drawn by a succession of various artists.