Cecil Herndon, age 15, of Greenfield, Ind., for his question:
WHEN WAS THE FIRST COMIC STRIP PRINTED?
Newspapers often conduct reader surveys to find out which features are the most popular with subscribers. In almost every survey, the comic strips end up winning honors as having the largest readership. A comic strip's purpose is very simple: to entertain. Most strips feature humor, and that's why they're often called the funnies, although some deal in drama.
An American cartoonist from Lancaster, Ohio, drew the first newspaper comic strip that became popular. It was called Hogan's Alley, and it was drawn for the Sunday edition of the New York World. It first appeared in 1894 and was the work of artist Richard Outcault.
Two years later, Outcault's comic strip became the world's first to appear in color. The central character, a mischievous little imp, was printed wearing yellow clothes, and the strip soon came to be known as the Yellow Kid.
A sensational rivalry: started in New York as a result of the Yellow Kid. The editors of the New York Journal offered Outcault an enormous salary to leave the World and draw a comic strip for them. When he moved, the editors at the World hired a new artist to draw the Yellow Kid. Other editors referred to them as the Yellow Kid journals, and later yellow journals. The term "yellow journalism," meaning newspaper writing of a highly sensational flavor, came from this early comic strip exchange.
In 1897 the New York Journal started another comic strip that became popular: The Katzenjammer Kids drawn by an artist named Rudolph Dirks. And then in 1907, out of the San Francisco Chronicle, came the world's first successful daily comic strip: Bud Fisher's Mutt and Jeff.
As the years passed, the popularity of newspaper comic strips increased. At first the humor panels dominated the field with adventure strips joining the line up in the 1930s.
Comic strips seemed to lose some of their popularity during the late 1940s as television antennas sprouted across the land, but by the 1960s the newspaper comic strips had again regained most of their lost popularity.
Many motion pictures, television programs, plays, songs and radio programs have been inspired by popular newspaper comic strips.
Newspaper comic strips have successfully moved from the comic pages into book form. Each year more than 250 million comic books are sold throughout the world.
Comic strip characters have also gone into business. Many promote commercial products and are used in advertising campaigns.
The fine arts field has also been influenced by the comics in a movement called pop art.