Please help me find R. F. Outcault's Pore Li'l Mose

[Yellow Kid]

I have been working on an index of Outcault's Pore Li'l Mose (PLM) newspaper comic strip. As you might imagine, it is very difficult to obtain good information and I would like to ask for your help. There are several dates for which I can't tell if PLM was published and I thought that some of you might have early newspaper sections and be able to confirm that the strip was or wasn't in the paper. Even knowing that it wasn't for sure is just as important as knowing it was. If it was, the date and title of the strip would be greatly appreciated.

The dates I need to know about are:

12/09/1900

12/16/1900

12/23/1900

12/30/1900

12/08/1901

02/16/1902

02/23/1902

03/16/1901

03/23/1902

03/30/1902

05/04/1902

05/18/1902 (also the date of the first Buster Brown strip)

06/01/1902

06/08/1902

06/29/1902

08/03/1902

08/10/1902

ANY AFTER 08/24/1902

 

Thanks a lot for your help!

Richard Olson

[Weird Paper]

I have the book, but I'm guessing you're looking for strips that aren't in it. If you need any info from the book, though, I can help you.

[Theagenes]

Rich, have you tried newspaperarchive.com? They have quite a few old newspapers that you can search and download. I think you get a few freebies, then you have to pay for the service. Pore Lil Mose was in the Herald, right?

[gadzukes]

About 10 years ago I bought the cover to the book with nothing inside. I spent about 2 years slowly finding every page from the book (you probably already know this, but most of the books were broken up to sell pages individually). I finally got the whole book put together. It took a lot of patience but I was able to do it without ever spending more than $10 on any page. In my looking for those pages I don't think I ever ran across any of the actual strips from the newspaper though.

[gadzukes]

Richard, I still have some photos of some yellow kid strips that I sold a couple years ago. I didn't know what I had at the time so I was shocked when they sold for $3500. If you want to see them I'll post them. Maybe there's a yellow kid piece that you haven't seen.

[Yellow Kid]

Yellow Kid Sunday pages used to be extremely rare, and I can remember paying $500 for one I really wanted. Then eBay made them more common, then Kitchen Sink published the book containing all of the pages, and now they are relatively reasonable. Once I bought a page over the phone and when it arrived, it turned out to be the only known Yellow Kid proof page. The colors were just amazing on that slick paper. Because of its rarity, I donated it, along with a lot of others things, to the comic library at Ohio State. Brian Walker used it in the first volume of his great set on the comics. Yellow Kid original art for Sunday pages is still rare, as is presentation art.

 

You are absolutely correct about the Pore Little Mose book. Many dealers used to take it apart if it wasn't in great shape and frame the individual pages and sell them for more than they could get for the book. I understood the reasoning but hated to see it happen. Actually, the project I am working on right now with colleagues is to write an article about PLM for Hogan's Alley that will also contain a listing of all PLM dates and titles. We have even toyed with the idea of putting all of the pages in one of those computer books as PLM is still a very popular character and very few people have ever seen all of the pages.

[Weird Paper]

In my travels last summer, somewhere on a two-lane road in either eastern New Hampshire or western Maine, I stumbled upon an antique shop that had a stack of the pages from the book (and the cover) for sale -- at around $10-12 a page, I think. I looked over them, just because it's really unusual to see them, but didn't consider buying any since I had a complete, intact copy. I wish I'd grabbed a business card, or could remember exactly where it was...

[gadzukes]

How many PLM pages do you think were published? I think the book had 78?

[gadzukes]

If you want to see a few of the Yellow Kid pages I saved photos of, go to this link

 

http://s1218.photobucket.com/albums/dd414/gadzukes1/yellowkid/

 

Here's one of my favorite pics, I think it's an early one. Maybe he wasn't even known as the yellow kid yet as there is no writing on his yellow shirt.

 

 

 

[Yellow Kid]

Right now I can account for around 70 pages, 36 of which were reprinted in the book.There is still a possibility of a few more, and that is what I am trying to nail down.

[Yellow Kid]

The interesting thing about the YK is that he started out in b+w cartoons, first in TRUTH and later in the NY World. Then he started appearing in color, wearing a blue nightshirt in the first color page. He wore yellow a few times, he wore a plaid, but it wasn't until near the end of the year that his nightshirt color became fixed as yellow. And while everyone referred to him as the Yellow Kid because of this, that was not the name of the comic.

[Ameri]

This is from 2/1/1898. Yellow Kid seemed to be everywhere in 1898

 

April 1898

[Yellow Kid]

The first cartoon, "I'm de only kid what is," refers to the fact that after Hearst hired Outcault away from Pulitzer, Pulitzer had George B. Luks, a staff artist, start drawing a Yellow Kid Sunday comic. Pulitzer maintained that his paper owned the rights to the Yellow Kid and the Hogan's Alley comic in which he appeared. One of Outcault's first Yellow Kid pages for Hearst showed the Kid marching with his gang from "The World's" Hogan's Alley to "The Journal's" McFadden's Row of Flats. In the first few months after the move, Outcault drew many Kid cartoons where he stated he was the genuine Yellow Kid.

[Ameri]

Thanks for that information Yellow Kid. I didn't know that. Who would you say drew the "I'm the kid wot is" from the Cleveland newspaper I posted? Luks or Outcault?

[archiefan]

Hey Richard,

 

It looks like there might be one issued for 12/08/01. The San Francisco Academy of Comic Art lists on in their collection. Here is the link to their holdings:

 

Link

 

Scott

[Yellow Kid]

Neither--it was almost certainly a staff artist.

 

The first cartoon, "I'm de only kid what is," refers to the fact that after Hearst hired Outcault away from Pulitzer, Pulitzer had George B. Luks, a staff artist, start drawing a Yellow Kid Sunday comic. Pulitzer maintained that his paper owned the rights to the Yellow Kid and the Hogan's Alley comic in which he appeared. One of Outcault's first Yellow Kid pages for Hearst showed the Kid marching with his gang from "The World's" Hogan's Alley to "The Journal's" McFadden's Row of Flats. In the first few months after the move, Outcault drew many Kid cartoons where he stated he was the genuine Yellow Kid.

[Yellow Kid]

Scott,

Thanks for the link. I had found the Sunday's they had scanned, but I missed this and I really appreciate it. When the list is complete, I'll post it here.

Thanks Again,

Richard

 

Thanks for that information Yellow Kid. I didn't know that. Who would you say drew the "I'm the kid wot is" from the Cleveland newspaper I posted? Luks or Outcault?

[esquirecomics]

Don't know if this helps, but I have these:

 

[Yellow Kid]

Thanks, they are great examples of PLM, but I do have them. Actually, I have all of the pages from the book, which are even nicer than the tear sheets because of the paper they were printed on.

[bluechip]

Have the book and a smattering of sunday strips, but these are the only ones I had pics already on file. Hope they help.