It was an Antiques Roadshow experience: In early January, a stranger called The Ohio State University Cartoon Research Library to say that she had found some old cartoons tucked in a stack of boxes that had been sitting in her family’s business for decades. She wanted to know if they were valuable. Lucy Shelton Caswell, Professor and Curator of the library, was skeptical since she often receives calls from people who have found items in grandma’s attic that end up having only sentimental value. The caller was insistent however, and said she was near to campus and would like to bring her find to the library for Caswell to see. An appointment was made for the next afternoon. The caller arrived with a battered cardboard folio. When it was opened, Caswell knew that this time a treasure had been uncovered. Inside were original, hand-colored drawings from Winsor McCay’s first comic strip,A Tale of the Jungle Imps by Felix Fiddle. Up to that moment, no original drawings of the strip were known to exist.

Best known for his comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland, McCay has been described variously as “the first authentic genius in the comic strip medium,” “one of American’s rare, great fantasists,” and a cartoonist for whom there has been “no equal before or since.” During the 1890s McCay worked as an artist for the Vine Street Dime Museum and Palace Theater in Cincinnati. In 1900 he joined the staff of the Cincinnati Enquirer as an artist/reporter. In 1903 he created forty-three episodes of A Tale of the Jungle Imps by Felix Fiddle , illustrated stories about pixies and the imaginary animals they encounter that were printed full-page in color. McCay’s biographer John Canemaker notes the importance of this “proto-comic strip” for McCay: “Tales of the Jungle Imps was Winsor McCay’s first attempt in an extended series format to bring together all of his eclectic talents in a cohesive graphic style. On each page, he found fresh ways to combine his exquisite draftsmanship, dynamic staging, sense of caricature, mastery of perspective, and feeling for motion with his version of the decorative art nouveau style.” Until January 2006 none of the original drawings created by McCay had been seen for more than a century.

Kate Salley Palmer: Born to Cartoon is an exhibition of Palmer’s editorial cartoons about national and international issues. She claims that cartoonists are born, not made–and her passion for her art is reflected in her work.

An Orangeburg, South Carolina, native, Kate Salley Palmer graduated from the University of South Carolina with a major in elementary education. She began freelance cartooning with the Greenville News in 1975 and in 1978 she became their first full-time editorial cartoonist. She was syndicated by Field (later News America Syndicate) in 1980. She left the newspaper in 1984 and moved to Associated Features in 1986. Her syndication ended in 1989, after which she has devoted her efforts to writing and illustrating children’s books.

The Yellow Kid has been described as the first comic strip superstar. His popularity was so enormous that the great rival newspapers in New York City, Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal, at one time ran competing versions of the Yellow Kid drawn by two cartoonists. The Kid was successfully merchandised by a wide range of products from cigarettes and game cards to dolls and sheet music.

Richard Felton Outcault (1863-1928) created the comic strip Hogan’s Alley, which is considered to be the first significant comic strip in American newspapers. It debuted in 1895 and featured Mickey Dugan, who is better known as the Yellow Kid.

This exhibition features rare examples of original full-color newspaper pages featuring the Yellow Kid from the San Francisco Academy of Comic Art Collection

For most of the 19th century, American magazines were vast monochromatic fields of black on white. Beginning in the 1830s, a few magazines featured small hand-colored plates, but they were meager exceptions. Then, in the 1870s, thanks to the perfection of the chromolithographic process, a new breed of magazine exploding with color came to the fore. In short order, chromolithographic weeklies began popping up all over America. Outside of the famous New York weeklies, Puck and Judge, though, none lasted more than a year or two, except for one–The San Francisco Wasp.

That The Wasp endured was most improbable. Founded during the worst financial depression of the 19th century, it was expensive to produce. Published in an under-populated region of the country, it was guaranteed never to have a significant circulation. Often out of step with majority opinion, it never became the political power broker it aspired to be. Yet The Wasp was a success. It was for many years the most widely read magazine west of the Rockies. Its best cartoons compared favorably with those being published in New York. And the work of one of its editors, Ambrose Bierce, is read by more people today than are the writings of any of the editors of its more widely celebrated rivals.

Gillray’s Legacy coincides with the 2004 Festival of Cartoon Art. Celebrating Georgian England’s greatest caricaturist as part of a twenty-first century conference focusing on censorship, self-censorship and editorial control may seem far-fetched. During an election year at a time of heightened national and international concerns, it is, however, most appropriate to remember that James Gillray was neither restrained nor genteel with his art. Some of the works in this exhibit would not be printed in a newspaper, and several others would draw angry letters to the editor.