Art 3.25x4-1/8". The Yellow Kid was the first successful color comic strip in American newspapers. The popularity of Hogan's Alley (title of the feature which ran in the New York World c. 1895-1898) immediately led to the Sunday color comic supplement and the launching of other strips like The Katzenjammer Kids, Little Jimmy, Happy Hooligan, Maud the Mule, Alphonse and Gaston and countless others. The comic adventures of The Yellow Kid were so popular that the creator of Hogan's Alley, Richard Felton Outcault, was hired away from the World's publisher Joseph Pulitzer to draw his character for William Randolph Hearst but Pulitzer retained the feature, and top staff artist George B. Luks was directed to draw his version of The Yellow Kid. Luks did sporadic pages between May 31, 1896 and December 5, 1897. For a year two versions appeared in these newspapers. The expediential increase in the newspaper circulations during the raucus rivalry over Hogan's Alley reportedly gave rise to the expression "Yellow Journalism." George Luks was no anonymous staff artist when he received his assignment to draw The Yellow Kid. His cartoons and illustrations appeared throughout the pages of the World and magazines like Truth. His weekly Hogan's Alley cartoons in color - many full page, populated by dozens of figures, inside jokes and political commentary attracted wide attention. Within ten years, however, Luks had graduated to fine art although not by the traditional academic route. An American expressionist and urban realist, he painted and took as his subjects the common people, including outcasts. In the same manner as with the cartoon Hogan's Alley, it was not humans but humanity that attracted his attention. Very few original drawings have survived of the influential Yellow Kid and no Luks drawing is reported among them. This ink and watercolor drawing might well be the only Luks Yellow Kid in existence. It is not known whether it was done for publication or for personal presentation. The Yellow Kid is in a festive hat and his distinctive nightgown with characteristic monologue written on front which reads "I Press De Button - You Do De Rest! Say! Cake And Candies Wot I'd Like!!" He is ringing the doorbell of 6450 Parnell Avenue and smokestack-filled cityscape is seen in the bkg. Boldly signed in ink at lower right "Geo. B. Luks 98." Art is on thin artboard which has been mounted to a slightly larger artboard. Light dust soil but overall clean and Exc. Historic. From the collection of noted comics historian Richard Marschall.