The Yellow Kid in glorious colour

From The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum Facebook page.

What would the iconic Yellow Kid have looked like if we only had black & white library microfilm to view him on?

In ‘Man saves comics! Bill Blackbeard’s Treasure of 20th Century Newspaper’ you can see the Yellow Kid from ‘McFadden’s Row of Flats’ on a microfilm reader as it was microfilmed from the New York Journal, November 8th, 1896.

You can see in the image above, the full glory of the actual colour Richard F. Outcault page saved by Blackbeard in his San Francisco Academy of Comic Art Collection.

Without Blackbeard’s heroic efforts to save the newspaper comics from libraries, who in the 1960s and 1970s were microfilming for preservation and storage and discarding their physical bound volumes, we would not be able to see the yellow color in the Yellow Kid’s shirt! 

Man Saves Comics! Bill Blackbeard’s Treasure of 20th Century Newspapers
November 12, 2022 – May 7, 2023

Open Tuesday through Sunday from 1-5 pm

Admission is free
The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum Sullivant Hall Building (North Entrance)
1813 N. High St
Columbus, OH 43210