More importantly, "SHALL LADIES SMOKE?"
"The Stuff I Find At Work - Platinum Age Comic Strips" Dept.:
For the longest time, the Yellow Kid was considered the first newspaper comics character by a lot of American comic book historians, and yes, while The Kid was the first AMERICAN ongoing comic strip character, he was far from the first in the medium.
Case in point - this 1889 "comical story" by Cyril R. Hallward as part of his series of "entertainments" as published in THE ILLUSTRATED SPORTING AND DRAMATIC NEWS. Hallward's work largely consisted of a young Victorian woman giving her thoughts on one subject or the other, with the joke, as best as I can gather, being that women reading the newspaper would identify with them, and the men in their lives would laugh at the "foolishness" presented. Yes, swell to be a young woman in Victorian England.
Submitted for your approval, "SHALL LADIES SMOKE?" an eight panel Cyril R. Hallward strip as first presented in the October 26th, 1889 issue of THE ILLUSTRATED SPORTING AND DRAMATIC NEWS.
