Yellow Kid

I ran into one of my favorite books with deep, rich cover color and couldn't resist the great price I was offered. If it weren't for that lower right cover crease it would be a fantastic book but I still like it just the way it is.

Beautiful book, Steve, of what I think is the hardest Barks issue to find in high grade.

By the time of the first guide, Leonard Brown and Malcolm Willits were doing well at Collectors Bookstore. Leonard wouldn't use the guide and had his own little black book of prices. Each year he would tell me about a title or company that had become very popular and a little research showed that it was the area where his pricing was lower than the prices in the guide. I should add that sometimes the discrepancy was in the other direction, and then he couldn't sell those books until the next guide was published. It was a lot of fun watching the hobby develop in Southern California.

When Leonard Brown and I started our collectible comics mail order business in 1959, we wondered if a book would ever sell for $50. Once that barrier was broken, we were pretty sure that $100 was not possible. But as the sources for buying old comics increased, the number of collectors increased as well. At that point in time, the reprint comics ruled the hobby and Flash Gordon, Prince Valiant, and Tarzan ruled the hobby. The Flash Gordon Feature Book #25 was the most expensive book in the hobby.

I have been bidding in Ted's auctions from the beginning, and actually have a complete set of his auction catalogs. As Robot Man said, Ted's auctions always had the best collection of ephemera, and I have won all sorts of things over the years. I have consigned things as well, and was always happy with the results as all memorabilia collectors check his auctions. After Steve bought the auction, the catalogs looked nicer and had even better lots, including better comic books. For my interests, it is the best auction in the hobby!

I started Jr. High in Long Beach in the fall of 1956 and it was a great time for a kid to live there. My parents would drive down to San Diego on Highway 101 to see an uncle and we would stop along the way to buy pieces of smoked fish at the stands along the highway. At the time, San Diego was referred to as a sleepy little navy town. Now there are interstates with heavy traffic 24 hours a day and no smoked fish stands and the politicians call it progress. I am happy not to live there any more.

Thanks, Bob, I really appreciate your encouragement. If you missed it, in Overtreet #47, pp. 1198-1201, is an article about the trip my friend, Hans Pedersen, and I made to visit and to help evaluate the Outcault Family Collection. For people interested in the work of Richard F. Outcault and the birth of the American comic, it was an incredible experience. RFO didn't create the first newspaper comic, but the Yellow Kid was the first character to have a continuing role, demonstrate that a comic could sell newspapers, and also be merchandised successfully. He went on to create Pore Li'l Mose, the first black character that was portrayed with sensitivity, and then later hit the jackpot with Buster Brown.

Perhaps because they were saving so many Sunday tear sheets, which were more colorful, the family didn't see the need to also save the original art. Perhaps the paper tossed the art away once it was published. 1910 was just a year I picked as an arbitrary dividing point because so much of the art collection was created after that point.

No stand alone PLM original art. No PLM book in my plans. Outcault saved some of his art but it was nearly all work after1910. He did save tear sheets from 1895 forward, and the family collection probably had about half of them up to 1906 but then fewer and fewer each year.

Luck was with me and I was able to complete the Pore Li'l Mose inventory and it appeared as an article in Hogan's Alley a couple of years ago. I helped the estate with their collection and they did have PLM tear sheets, and one piece of BB original art with PLM in it.. They also had six pieces of Yellow Kid original art used to create some of the monthly postcards. They only had two pieces of BB original art from early 1903, which was within the first year of the strip's publication, but nothing from 1902. It was an amazing experience to visit them with a good friend and help them inventory the collection.

Buster Brown first appeared in the New York Herald on 4 May 1902 and was an immediate success for Richard F. Outcault. Unlike his Yellow Kid, which only appeared in New York city papers, printing advances made it possible for Buster Brown to appear nationally and he was very popular for virtually the next 20 years. While there are detailed lists of when the Yellow Kid was published and the title of each strip, and also for Pore Li'l Mose, there doesn't seem to be anything comparable for Buster Brown. I hope to publish such a listing for Buster's 1902 appearances and now need the titles of four strips to be able to share that information. If anyone can contribute the title of any or all of the strips published on the following dates, I would really appreciate their help. The dates are: 8 June 1902, 15 June 1902, 22 June 1902, and 7 September 1902. Thanks for your help!

I found them, Frank, and the swamp scene sure reminded me of the 20 years I lived on the edge of the Honey Island Swamp in Slidell LA and could hear the big gators barking 50 yds. away as I went to sleep. Swamps are very eerie. Great cover!

Neil was a great illustrator and today is best known for his art in a majority of the OZ books.

W. O. Wilson's Madge was a personal favorite of mine because of he way he varied cell sizes and shapes. In fact I wrote an article about the strip with Jenny Robb, who is now the Director of the Billy Ireland Comic Museum at Ohio State University. We published it in 1506 Nix Nix, a specialty journal for people who loved old newspaper comics. Great find!

Outcault's Buster Brown (1902) and Cady's Peter Rabbit (1921) each ran for over 20 years and were very popular, as was Gray's Little Orphan Annie (1924). If today you made a list of 100 early comic strip characters and asked 1,000 people which names they recognized, I would expect all three of them to be among the top ten identified and, therefore, the most famous ten. Of course it all depends on how you define "famous" but name recognition has some face validity.

Robot Man has clearly identified the problem for some of us. Comics are easy to sell, either wholesale, on consignment, or by auction. I know Buddy Saunders at My Comic Shop and would trust him to sell my books in the best way for the benefit of my wife. Original art is a little trickier, but I have a friend who will either guide my wife or just sell things for her. The memorabilia is the most difficult as there aren't as many collectors or dealers. When my old friend, Leonard Brown, was dying, he gave me all of his comics and asked me to sell them as a group at a set price. He kept his art and memorabilia and told his wife to give them all to me when he died and I would sell them for her, which I did. But you need a friend who knows the material, that you can trust completely, and who has the time to do it. And like several people have mentioned, leaving written instructions is a great idea. I have taken it a step further and talked with the people I mention in my instructions. I also have identified specific items that I want to give to a few friends as well as the comic museum at Ohio State University. Whatever you decide to do, start planning now and begin taking action. Remember the old Yiddish saying, "Mann Traoch, Gott Lauch.".

Robot Man, Great find on one of my favorite pinbacks! It is one of the few I am still looking for and hope to find in the coming year. Congratulations!

Bob, those yearly notices make a wonderful collection and even after they switched to postcards for the last few, the art was still great. The one you posted is one of my favorites.

One or two used to show up now and then, Andrew, but I haven't seen any in a long time and this is the only set of ten with a mailer that I have ever seen. I think the original owner must have left them in the mailer because the condition is so nice. Of course there must be more of them out there, but I feel very fortunate to have this set.

WDCS has had many subscription premiums over the years. In 1944 they offered 1, 2, or 3 free Donald Duck prints to go with 1, 2, or 3 year subscriptions. In 1946, they offered 6 free prints to go with a three or four year subscription. The prints were the covers of selected previous issues of WDCS but without any printing, just the art work. Later they offered readers a chance to order 10 prints in a set by sending in a nominal fee. I think the prints are both rare and beautiful and am happy to share my set. The comics used were WDCS 24, 25, 29, 30, 33, 41, 43, 45, 47, and 48 and they will be presented in that order.

I have them, but the bound volume really did have just those three copies. Here is a photo of all of the oversized early Disney books.

I managed to mess this up royally but I did just have another birthday. The books are all there but not in order but in groups of 12 that are. This is why I hate posting.

Recently a question was raised about which comics contained Barks stories containing Uncle Scrooge. He was always a favorite of mine and several years ago I put together a HG collection of those books. The Donald Duck issues and the Uncle Scrooge issues have been pictured many times, but here are the rest of the books in that collection. I had thought I might sell them a few years ago and submitted a sample for grading, and you can see that the results are variable but all are nice.

For the Disney collectors, and I have always been one, here is a set of the 16 Dumbo Weekly issues with the holder and mailer.

Thanks, Andrew. I put them in Mylar's but still have them in the boxes he used to ship them to me. This set was his pride and joy, and I sure wish Ray was still here to enjoy them.