Medial transgressions: comics – sheet music – theatre – toys

Abstract

This article examines the Yellow Kid comic figure of the 1890s, which originated in the Sunday comics supplement of Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World; it argues that the popularity of the Yellow Kid hinged on its unfolding across media. The comic figure quickly started to spread outside the newspaper supplements and circulated in all kinds of formats. Accordingly, the following pages pursue the Yellow Kid’s medial transgressions by examining his migrations into theatre, music, advertising, and toy manufacturing, thereby investigating how these movements are negotiated in the comics pages as well as in the other medial formats of the Yellow Kid. By looking at the late nineteenth century medial transgressions of the Yellow Kid comic figure, this article aims to offer a historical perspective on developments of contemporary comics and other forms of graphic narrative, which are very often enmeshed in a network of multiple media systems and are conditioned by complex intermedial as well as transmedial configurations.