History[edit]
Joseph Pulitzer's New York World newspaper began publishing cartoons in 1889. A color Sunday humor supplement began to run in the World in Spring 1893. In 1894, the World published the first color strip, designed by Walt McDougall, showing that the technique already enabled this kind of publication.[1] The supplement's editor Morrill Goddard contacted cartoonist Richard F. Outcault and offered Outcault a full-time position with the World.[2] Outcault's Yellow Kid character made his debut in the World on January 13, 1895. The kid appeared in color for the first time in the May 5 issue in a cartoon titled "At the Circus in Hogan's Alley". Outcault weekly Hogan's Alley cartoons appeared from then on in color, starring rambunctious slum kids in the streets, in particular, the bald kid, who gained the name Mickey Dugan. The strip's popularity drove up the World's circulation and the Kid was widely merchandised. Outcault — and much of the World's Sunday supplement staff — left for William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal on October 18, 1896. George Luks took over with his own version of Hogan's Alley;[2] but the Yellow Kid's popularity soon faded, and Luks' version ended in December 1897.
After Hogan's Alley, the World published a number of comic strips from the late 1890s until the paper's 1931 demise. The prolific cartoonist C. W. Kahles was responsible for numerous comic strips for the World. He is credited as the pioneer of daily comic strip continuity with his Clarence the Cop, which he drew for the World beginning in the latter 1890s. It introduced to newspapers the innovation of continuing a comic strip story in a day-to-day serial format,[3] and is also considered to be the first police strip.[4] Kahles' Sandy Highflyer, the Airship Man (1902–1904) is considered the first aviation comic strip.[4] The cartoonist and comics historian Ernest McGee called Kahles the "hardest working cartoonist in history, having as many as eight Sunday comics running at one time (1905-1906) with no assistants to help him."[4]
Clare Victor Dwiggins joined the World in 1897. He created a wide variety of gag panels. In 1904, after winning $3,000 at the racetrack, cartoonist George McManus went to New York City and a job with the World, where he worked on several short-lived comic strips. One of them, The Newlyweds (later renamed Their Only Child) is considered one of the first comic strips to depict the lives of the typical American family.[5] Gene Carr and Milt Gross were also notable for the number of their comic strips published and distributed by the World.
Beginning in about 1905, the company began syndicating strips to other newspapers under the name World Feature Service; in circa 1910 it added the syndication division New York World Press Publishing (also known as Press Publishing Co.).[6]
Many notable cartoonists were on staff at various times at the paper, including Charles W. Saalburg, V. Floyd Campbell, Richard F. Outcault, Walt McDougall, George Herriman, Harry Grant Dart, J. Campbell Cory, George Luks, Clare Victor Dwiggins, C. W. Kahles, Carl Thomas Anderson, Charles A. Voight, Jack Callahan, Frank Fogarty, Walter Berndt, George McManus, Leslie Turner, Harry Haenigsen, and Percy Crosby. In the early 1900s the World was known as "the promised land for aspiring cartoonists."[7] Charles Saalburg was chief of the color department during the heyday of the Yellow Kid.[8] Harry Grant Dart eventually rose to become the World's art editor, followed by Al Smith, who was the art editor for the syndication department from 1920 to 1930.
After a series of legal battles between 1912 and 1914, Rudolph Dirks, creator of the hugely popular The Katzenjammer Kids strip, left the Hearst organization for Pulitzer and began a new strip, first titled Hans and Fritz and then The Captain and the Kids. It featured the same characters seen in The Katzenjammer Kids, and remained nearly as popular (eventually running until 1979).
The E. W. Scripps Company acquired the New York World newspaper and its syndication assets in February 1931, bringing over to Scripps' United Feature Syndicate the popular comic strips The Captain and the Kids, Everyday Movies, Fritzi Ritz, Hawkshaw the Detective, Joe Jinks, and Little Mary Mixup.[9]