The Yellow Kid

The Yellow Kid is a bald, jug-eared slum child from New York's Hogan's Alley, depicted in R. F. Outcault's groundbreaking comic strip as a mischievous but good-natured ragamuffin whose yellow nightshirt bore printed commentary on urban tenement life.

Few characters can claim to have helped launch an entire medium, but The Yellow Kid is one of them — a Platinum Age original whose 1896 debut in American Humorist under the pen of R. F. Outcault places them at the very dawn of the American comic strip tradition. Spanning an astonishing stretch of publication history that reaches all the way to 2014, this iconic figure has kept remarkable company over the decades, sharing pages with the likes of Dick Tracy, The Shadow's Lamont Cranston, and Marla Drake. With a key-issue appearance to their name and turns in publications as varied as Judge and Captain America, The Yellow Kid is a genuine piece of living comics history — a character whose enduring presence reminds collectors just how deep the roots of this art form truly run.