Debating the origins of American color comics between Saalburg’s Ting-Lings and Outcault’s Yellow Kid
Academic invisibility and the yellow peril
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22003499 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Monica Chiu (0000-0002-3549-6777, University of New Hampshire at Manchester, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Pages | 1-26 |
| Publication date | 2025-09-17 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Graphic Novels & Comics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2150-4857 • E-ISSN: 2150-4865 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/21504857.2025.2561044 |
| OpenAlex | W4414339519 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 15 |
Richard F. Outcault’s Yellow Kid is not the first American comics character to be printed in colour and serialised – despite decades of comics scholarship claiming it so. In brief asides or footnotes, they acknowledge that Charles Saalburg’s Orientalized Ting-Lings are the origins of America’s colour comic strips, but unfortunately give this strip cursory examination. This essay will expound on why the Ting-Lings remain understudied in published materials. Relevant to my argument is Michelle Ann Abate’s argument in a 2021–2022 ImageText journal article arguing that the Yellow Kid is better viewed historically not as Irish American, as he has been regarded for over a century, but as Irish Asian. From Abate’s inquiry into who put the ‘yellow’ in the Yellow Kid, I explore Saalburg’s Ting-Lings as the first colour comic strip through yellow lenses. That is, I use Asian immigrant history to re-visit Saalburg’s characters through America’s Asia, a term introduced by Colleen Lye to explain representations of Asians in American literature from 1893 to 1945. I explore how the deliberate interjection of the Ting-Lings impacts comics scholarship. I query the quick demise of the Ting-Lings in popular culture and scholarly invisibility. What do the comics brief references in general comics histories, and often complete absence from scholarly works, suggest about Saalburg’s Orientalist caricatures in their American contexts and about the proclivities of Chicago’s Progressive-era newspaper readers? In proposing answers to these questions, I lift the Ting-Lings out of obscurity to join the Yellow Kid at the comics forefront
Colored · Comics · Invisibility · Performance art · American and British Literature Analysis · Comics and Graphic Narratives · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies
| Highly cited | No |
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