CHAPTER 2
Have you read a newspaper today? Look in any newspaper and you might find dozens of comics printed in their very own section. Comics such as Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes, Garfield, Get Fuzzy, and Pearls Before Swine have all become household names thanks to their presence in newspapers.
Comics like these didn’t exist in early American newspapers. Early comics were usually political cartoons such as those drawn by Paul Revere. It took the popularity and innovation of one political cartoon character to break open the gates for modern newspaper comics. This character was a bald boy in a yellow smock.
WORDS TO KNOW
innovation: a new creation or a unique solution to a problem.
smock: a cloth worn over clothing to protect it from stains.
THE YELLOW KID
In 1895, Joseph Pulitzer was one of the most powerful newspaper publishers in America. He hired Richard F. Outcault to create the first serial comic strip character. Outcault’s comic was called The Yellow Kid. The character wore a yellow smock with writing on it that stated what he was thinking or saying.
First conceptualized as a political cartoon, The Yellow Kid soon became very popular. Pulitzer published the comic on one entire sheet of newspaper using new printing techniques that allowed for cheap color reproduction.
The bright yellow of the kid’s smock and the humor in the comic caught the attention of Pulitzer’s readers. The Yellow Kid resembled old political comics and broadsheets since it rarely used panels, relying on one giant illustration to convey many jokes. For a while, The Yellow Kid was as popular as Mickey Mouse is today.
WORDS TO KNOW
serial: occurring in a series.
conceptualized: imagined and thought out.
color reproduction: to make color prints of an original piecec of art.
humor: the quality of being funny.
THE POPULARITY OF THE YELLOW KID LED PULITZER TO FIND OTHER CARTOONISTS WHO WERE EAGER TO SEE THEIR CHARACTERS REACH A WIDER AUDIENCE.
Pulitzer’s main rival in the newspaper industry, William Randolph Hearst, wanted to include comics in his newspapers, too. He even tried to convince Richard Outcault to leave Pulitzer’s newspapers and draw The Yellow Kid for Hearst’s publications.
THE AMAZING COLOR PRINTER
Before digital printing was invented, most color printing was done using a process of layering the tints of four colors. This tricked the eyes of readers into seeing more than just the four colors. The process, called CMYK, is still used today. The colors are cyan (C), magenta (M), yellow (Y), and black (K).
Richard Outcault’s comics often took up an entire page of the newspaper and could be very busy and chaotic. Take a look at this comic from 1896. How is it different from the comics you find in the newspaper today? Is it easier to read? More fun to look at? Is it more confusing? Why do you think comics have evolved into their current, simpler form?
WORDS TO KNOW
digital: characterized by electronic and computerized technology.
layering: stacking images on top of each other.
tint: a shade or variety of color.
EACH LAYER USES SHADES OF THOSE FOUR COLORS, WHICH, WHEN STACKED ON TOP OF EACH OTHER, CREATE WHAT LOOKS LIKE MANY DIFFERENT COLORS.
Early newspapers in America relied on movable type and woodcut images to print a single page. It was very time consuming! Large towns could afford to print daily newspapers, but small towns didn’t usually have this luxury. Then, in 1843, an inventor named Richard March Hoe created the steam-powered drum printer, which took castings from a master page. It could print page after page from a large roll of paper. The drum printer made the printing process faster and easier.
In the 1880s, mass color printing was developed. This new color separation technique was called chromolithography and allowed newspapers to print comics and etchings of photographs in color for the first time. Newspapers flew off the stands!
WORDS TO KNOW
movable type: a process of printing that uses individual type pieces to spell out words.
woodcut: a way of printing by carving an image on a piece of wood before adding ink and printing the image onto paper.
casting: a metal print form created to make multiple copies of a printed page.
master page: the version of a printed page that is used to make other copies.
chromolithography: a color printing process using metal plates to layer tints of color.
etching: a print made by scratching original art onto a metal plate.
FACT OR FICTION?
Could the popularity of America’s two major newspapers help to spark a war? A large part of the reason the United States went to war with Spain in the 1890s was because the public was influenced by articles written in Hearst’s and Pulitzer’s papers. The anti-Spanish articles were later found to be mostly false. The reporters had been actively encouraged to exaggerate their stories to help sell more newspapers! Do you think this could happen today? Why or why not?
THE FIRST SUNDAY COMICS
Joseph Pulitzer invented one of the most enduring forms of comics— the Sunday comics. First published in 1895, the Sunday comics were a collection of The Yellow Kid comics plus several others. The newspapers of the late nineteenth century were much larger than our papers today. The cartoonists often had an entire page to create their comics, and that meant a lot of creativity could go into each one.
Once Pulitzer proved that the Sunday comics increased sales, other publishers weren’t far behind in publishing Sunday comics of their own. Newspapers started calling these new drawings the funnies.
Through the years, the Sunday comics have decreased in size, but they still remain one of the major selling points of newspapers.
WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE FUNNY TO READ IN THE NEWSPAPER?
WORDS TO KNOW
funnies: the original name of comic strips in Sunday newspapers.
EARLY COMIC MASTERS
When comics first started appearing every week, newspapers were eager for new talent. Here are a few of the early masters of the modern comic medium.
Henry Conway Fisher and Mutt and Jeff: In 1907, Henry Conway Fisher, also known as Bud, introduced one of the greatest innovations in cartooning: the comic strip. Until then, most comics were huge splashes of color and action with few panel borders, such as in The Yellow Kid. Fisher decided to tell stories with standardized panels that were always the same size. Panels helped readers understand what was happening. The comic strip was also much smaller, which meant newspapers didn’t have to use most of a page for just one comic.
Bud Fisher’s comic strip, A. Mutt, featured a man called Mutt who got into lots of trouble. Hearst loved the work Fisher was doing and hired him to produce the strip for his national newspapers.
WORDS TO KNOW
medium: the material artists use to create their art, such as stone, paint, and ink.
standardized: a set way of doing something.
Look at the Mutt and Jeff comic strip that was reprinted in 1948. Is this the kind of humor people today would find funny? Why or why not?
Along with inventing the panel, Fisher also introduced another innovation to comics: the sidekick. Bud decided to draw another character into his strip, a man called Jeff. The friendship between Mutt and Jeff was so popular that Fisher began to include him as a regular part of the story. He even renamed the strip Mutt and Jeff.
George Herriman and Krazy Kat: The first widely published African American cartoonist was George Herriman from Louisiana. Herriman’s comic strip, called The Dingbat Family, began to appear in newspapers in 1910. The strip followed a cast of characters in an apartment building.
Krazy the cat and Ignatz the mouse were the most popular characters in the strip. One day, the mouse flung a brick at the cat’s head. The cat took the brick as a sign of love from the mouse. This ridiculous premise appealed to readers, and Krazy and Ignatz eventually took over the daily strip. Herriman renamed the strip Krazy Kat and introduced a third character, a dog called Offissa Pupp.
WORDS TO KNOW
sidekick: a character who supports the main character.
cast: a group of characters.
premise: the main idea of a story.
race: a group of people with the same skin color and other physical features.
More Krazy Kat!
Herriman played with the logic of the panels. Characters might find themselves in different seasons over the span of a few panels or they might chase each other around the moon. Eventually, inspired by the natural rock formations at Arizona’s Monument State Park, Herriman modeled his imaginary world after the real Coconino County.
HERRIMAN WROTE dialogue WITH AN INVENTED SPELLING OF ENGLISH WORDS THAT REFLECTED THE SOUNDS OF SPANISH, YIDDISH, AND CREOLE ACCENTS.
Krazy Kat was never a huge favorite with the general public. Many newspaper editors wanted to cancel the eccentric comic, but they couldn’t since their boss, Mr. Hearst, loved it. It was also loved by many great artists and writers of the early 1900s, including the painter Picasso and the poet e.e. cummings.
WORDS TO KNOW
logic: the principle, based on math, that things should work together in an orderly way.
dialogue: a conversation between two people.
eccentric: odd, usually in a unique way.
Winsor McCay and Dream of the Rarebit Fiend and Little Nemo in Slumberland: Winsor McCay began his career as a cartoonist drawing political cartoons, but he started making comic strips for his local paper after he saw how popular they were. His comic, Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, was an immediate success.
The exciting stories grew stranger and stranger until the final panel where the main character woke up. He blamed the strange dream on a cheese dish called rarebit, which he’d eaten before bed.
In 1905, McCay created Little Nemo in Slumberland. The strip followed the dream adventures of a boy named Nemo who was joined by a repeat cast of characters. With gigantic, colorful panels filled with inventive worlds, it almost always ended with Nemo waking in his bed and his father telling him to settle down. In one famous Sunday strip, Little Nemo dreams that his bed comes to life, the legs grow incredibly long, and it walks above New York City.
Winsor McKay’s comics were known as much for the artwork as the dialogue. Look at one of his comics from 1905. Where would a comic like this most likely be published today? In newspapers, magazines, or on websites?
WORDS TO KNOW
rarebit: a type of soft cheese which is famous for giving indigestion.
Little Nemo was wildly popular, and the inventive spirit McCay brought to his comic continues to inspire cartoonists today. While he was influenced by some of the art of his time, he was mostly inspired by the writings of psychologists.
Harold Gray and Little Orphan Annie: Harold Gray created the very popular Little Orphan Annie in 1924. The comic featured the adventures of an orphan girl with curly hair, a red dress, and large, blank eyes. Annie’s eyes allowed readers to add their own expressions to the character.
Little Orphan Annie became an iconic image of the times. Annie was the foster child of a rich man, Daddy Warbucks, and they were always getting separated and having to find each other again.
WORDS TO KNOW
psychologist: a person who studies the mind and behavior.
iconic: a widely recognized symbol of a certain time.
Does Little Orphan Annie sound familiar? The popular comic strip inspired a famous musical called Annie, which has been turned into a movie and has been performed by thousands of schools and local theater groups throughout the country. Next time you find yourself singing along to “It’s a Hard Knock Life,” think about how it all started with a comic strip from the 1920s!
E.C. Segar and Popeye: Comics of the early twentieth century were packed with physical action. E.C. Segar’s Popeye certainly had its share of fighting. Segar introduced Popeye as a side character in his popular strip, Thimble Theater.
Little Orphan Annie was so popular that, during a newspaper strike in the 1940s, New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia read the comic out loud on the radio so readers could keep up with her adventures. Listen to the mayor’s radio address. Do you think the comic was as much fun to listen to as it was to read? How does the mayor include a lesson after reading the comic out loud to the audience?
THE 50-YEAR-OLD, ONE-EYED SAILOR WHO LOVED TO FIGHT EVENTUALLY STOLE THE STRIP!
Segar was surprised to discover the popularity of a character he hadn’t planned on using for more than a few strips. Popeye’s fame grew, and just as in Krazy Kat, the strip was renamed Popeye after the new main character.
Part of the popularity of Popeye had to do with the action sequences. The strip portrayed Popeye fighting a variety of villains, including his arch-nemesis, Bluto. Segar drew exaggerated scenes, showing the energy of each punch, kick, and wallop with the intensity of modern-day special effects.
MANY HISTORIANS THINK POPEYE WAS THE FIRST SUPERHERO. HE COULD PUNCH HARDER THAN ANY LIVING MAN, ESCAPE ANY TRAP, AND EVEN STOP BULLETS.
WORDS TO KNOW
villain: a character who opposes the hero and does bad things.
arch-nemesis: a character who is the opposite of the main character, and usually the enemy.
“I YAM WHAT I YAM”
Popeye ate spinach to get strong. His theme song even touted the strengthening powers of the green veggie, “I’m Popeye the Sailor Man, I’m strong to the finish because I eats me spinach, I’m Popeye the Sailor Man!”
The publishers of Popeye thought this was a great way to get kids to eat healthy. A decimal mistake made in 1870 made people think spinach contained much more iron than it really does. Spinach is healthy, but not as healthy as people thought before 1937, when the mistake was fixed!
THING, JOB, DESCRIPTION
Supplies: pencils, paper, several friends, scissors, three cups, colored pencils or crayons
Comics are about communicating ideas with pictures and words. A cartoon needs to convey important information to the reader without having to say it. For example, if your main character is a crime-fighting duck, your readers need to immediately recognize it as both a duck and a crime fighter.
As you do this exercise with a group of friends, keep in mind some key questions:
*What makes my animal look unique?
*What sorts of things give clues about my animal’s job?
*How can someone tell what my character is feeling without words?
1Make three columns on a piece of paper and label them “Animal,” “Job,” and “Description.” In each column, write a list of examples. Write enough so each of your friends will get one from each column. For example, if you have eight friends, you would write out eight animals, eight jobs, and eight descriptions. These descriptions could be words such as clumsy, sleepy, or creative.
2Cut out each animal, job, and description. Put the animals in one cup, the jobs in another, and the descriptions in the last one. You can fold up each piece of paper so that anyone picking out of the cup can’t see what it is.
3Pass each cup around the room. Everyone takes one piece of paper out of each cup. Once everyone has all three pieces of paper, get drawing with colored pencils and crayons! Make sure nobody can see what your combination is and remember, don’t use any words.
4Have each person show his or her drawing to the group and see how quickly people can guess what each of the drawings depicts.
TRY THIS! What helped people guess correctly? Did color play a role? Try adding a fourth category to the exercise. Also try replacing the categories with other things, such as vegetables instead of animals, or super powers instead of jobs.
DRAW CARTOON FACES
Supplies: pencils, paper, good eraser, pen or thin marker
One of the best ways to show emotion on a character is through facial expressions. The face may seem complicated to draw at first, but when you follow a few simple steps you can draw all kinds of faces! The best way to draw anything is by breaking it down into simple shapes.
1 FACE SHAPE: Most faces are oval, but some look angular. Draw a few different face shapes. Here are some examples.
2 GUIDELINES: Once you have a face shape you’re happy with, lightly draw a vertical and horizontal guideline through the middle. These lines are very important. They guide us when placing the parts of the face.
3 NOSE: The nose is often used as a reference point on the face because it doesn’t change shape as often as eyes, eyebrows, and the mouth. The bottom line of the nose is usually halfway between the horizontal guideline and the chin. Here are some sample nose shapes.
4 EYES: Every cartoonist has his or her own style of drawing eyes. But the darkest part of the eye, the pupil, almost always goes on the horizontal guideline. Here are some examples.
5 MOUTH: Lightly draw two lines straight down from the pupils of the eyes. At about halfway between the bottom of your nose and the bottom of the chin, draw your mouth. Start one end at an eye line and connect to the other.
6 EYEBROWS: Eyebrows show the most emotion on a face. Look at the following examples and see how a blank face goes from normal, to mad, to sad, to tired, to surprised—all because of eyebrows.
7 EARS: To add ears, start at the horizontal line on the sides of your face. Curve up slightly before swooping around to the bottom of your ear. The base of the ear should be along the same line as the bottom of the nose. Take a look at the people around you. Do you notice how their eyes, noses, and ears all line up pretty much the same way?
8 HAIR: Start the hair alittle below the top of the head. The biggest mistake people make when drawing hair is not connecting it to the head! Look at your own hair or your friends’ hair. Which hairstyle will you choose?
9 Finish drawing the chin and trace over all the lines you want to keep with pen. This is called inking. Erase the pencil guidelines.
WORDS TO KNOW
inking: to use ink to add definition to pencil drawings.
DRAW CARTOON BODIES
Supplies: pencils, paper, tracing paper, eraser, photographs of people that show the full body such as images from magazines
Cartoon faces need to be attached to cartoon bodies to do stuff such as run, dance, sit, and fly. Get ready to draw cartoon bodies—bones first! Stick figures give us a general idea of where to put everything on our final drawing. Like the bones in your body, these lines give us a frame to build the meat of our characters.
1 Start with an action line. What’s an action line? Think of it as the moving direction of your character. The middle section of the line will be your character’s spine. Our character will be standing still, so our action line will be straight up and down.
2 Start at the top of your action line and draw your face shape, with the top of the line close to the top of the head. Don’t make it too large since you need to add the rest of the body.
3 Just like faces, bodies can be drawn first as simple shapes. Let’s draw a rectangle for the body. Then draw four circles, one at each corner of the rectangle.
4 Draw one line from each circle. These will be the arms and legs. Draw a circle at the end of each arm and a triangle at the bottom of the legs.
5 To make arms, draw two lines on either side of your arm line connecting the shoulder circle to the hand circle. If you want to get fancy, add an elbow circle and then connect shoulder to elbow and elbow to hand.
6 Repeat this process for the legs and neck. Erase the bone lines when you are done.
7 Clothes take a lot of practice to get right. Once you have the basic shapes of your body drawn out, however, you can hang clothing off of your character fairly easily. Add a simple T-shirt and pants.
TRY THIS! What body shapes do you see all around you? What is your body shape? Can you draw a full cartoon of yourself, face and body? Once you’ve mastered body shapes, try to draw different types of clothing on your characters. You can draw a bunch of dummy bodies and practice adding your fashions to them. Fashion designers do the same thing everyday!
TRY THIS, TOO! Now that you’ve mastered a cartoon body standing still, try to draw one in action. Look at people in different positions in magazines. Use tracing paper and try to find their action line, and then draw their sketchy skeleton. Try it on a bunch of different people and poses to see how your sketches change. Find some photos of kids and babies. Do their sketchy skeletons look the same as the adults? What’s different?
DRAW HANDS AND FEET
Supplies: pencils, paper, eraser, hands and feet
Some parts of a character are really tricky to draw. The two that cartoonists struggle with the most are hands and feet. Here are some suggestions for tackling these tricky parts.
HANDS: Start with shapes. Most complex body parts can be broken down into a combination of basic shapes. For hands, think of circles and ovals.
1 To draw a hand with the palm up, first draw a circle. This will be the palm of the hand you are drawing.
2 Now, draw an oval on top of the circle where the base of the thumb goes.
3 Draw five finger lines. Make a shorter one from the thumb oval and four coming out the top of the circle— notice how they are different lengths.
4 Using simple guidelines, mark off the knuckle, just as you marked off the elbows and knees in the cartoon body project on the previous page. Then add some meat to the skeleton fingers. Erase your guidelines and marvel at your accomplishment!
FEET: Have you ever really looked hard at your foot? What shape is it? Artists tend to think of the foot as a triangle and a circle. You can also think of your foot as a wedge.
1 Looking at your own foot for reference, draw what you think the basic shape is, either a wedge shape or a triangle/circle.
2 Toes aren’t as long or bendy as fingers, but they have distinct shapes. The big toe is a little farther away from the other four and is the base to your foot’s arch. Start your toes by drawing little ovals for each toe.
3 Just as you did for the arms, legs, and fingers, add the outline to each of your foot’s sketchy skeleton parts.
4 Erase your guidelines and enjoy! Next time, try drawing some shoes. How does this change how you think of a foot’s shape?
TRY THIS! Whenever you find yourself with a little free time, you can practice drawing hands. You always have one with you! Like learning to play an instrument, drawing takes practice.
DESIGN A CAST OF CHARACTERS
Supplies: pencils, paper, markers, small objects from around the house (such as vegetables, fruit, bottles, glasses, boots, and electronics)
If you saw just a dark outline of your favorite cartoon character, you could probably tell who it was from its shape. Russell from the movie Up looks like an egg, Popeye is skinny with a knobby head and huge forearms, and Sponge Bob is, well, a sponge! Interesting shapes make interesting characters. Practice making different characters out of everyday shapes.
1 Arrange your objects in front of you and draw each shape on a piece of paper. Review all your shapes—look at them upside down and sideways. Do the shapes suggest any body types to you? For example, an upside down ketchup bottle may look like a football player with a big chest.
2 Once you have some body types in mind, start to figure out how to turn each shape into a character. Sketch out the face, where the pants go, and add arms and legs. Use what you’ve learned from the projects so far to bring your characters to life. Don’t forget to give your characters names!
TRY THIS! When you watch a cartoon or animated movie, have your homemade manga sketchbook handy. Pause the movie when a new major character is introduced. Try to sketch the shape of that character. Do different shapes tell you something about the character? What are heroes shaped like? What about villains?
SUNDAY COMIC STRIP
Supplies: pencils, paper, ruler, pens, colored pencils, sketchbook with your character designs
Now that you have an awesome cast of characters, it’s time to show them off in a Sunday comic strip! Every good comic strip begins with a thumbnail. Not a real thumbnail! In cartooning, a thumbnail is a small sketch, or plan, of what your whole page will look like.
1 Start your thumbnail by making your comic strip panels. Draw a rectangle about 3 by 2 inches (8 by 5 centimeters) and then divide it up into panels. Use simple stick figures and rough word balloons to sketch out the action or joke of the strip. The beauty of thumbnails is you can erase them to change your ideas. You can even draw several thumbnails of each comic to try to find the best design.
2 On a fresh piece of paper, lay out your comic panels carefully with a ruler. Follow your thumbnail so that you have enough panels and they are in the right place.
3 Sketch out your characters and words with pencil first, then use your pen to trace the lines you want to keep. When you are done inking, erase the pencil.
4 Now you are ready for color! Be creative and don’t be afraid to use lots of color. Give your masterpiece a title and sign your name!
TRY THIS! Design other Sunday comics using different shapes for the panels. Do circles or triangles make the comic funnier or more serious? Try making a comic with no words at all. Can you still tell a joke or story without words?