We often forget that the first generation of newspaper cartoonists were  newspapermen.  Pioneers of the “funnies,” like R.F. (Yellow Kid) Outcault, Rudolph (Katzenjammer Kids) Dirks, F.B. (Happy Hooligan) Opper, Jimmy  (Little Jimmy) Swinnerton, Winsor (Little Nemo) McCay, as well as Art Young, Walt McDougall, George Luks emerged from newsrooms into the new comics supplements after 1896. They often spent years illustrating breaking stories and drawing pointed editorial cartoons while they were also inventing the comics as a new mass entertainment. The tone and style in these new comics pages were different – often ironic and satiric, screwball and sketchier – but they brought to these lighter arts the journalist’s deep acquaintance with all aspects of turn-of-the-century America. Outcault himself recounted how news gathering journeys through the slums of New York in the 1890s provided the raw material for Hogan’s Alley.