Producing mass entertainment : the serial life of the Yellow Kid Emerging mass culture in nineteenth century America was in no small way influenced by the Yellow Kid one of the first popular serial comic figures circulating Sunday supplements. Though comics existed before it was through the growing popularity of full color illustrations printed in such city papers as Inter Ocean (Chicago) and the World (New York) and the implementation of regular weekly publications of the extra sections that comics became a mass produced mass distributed staple of American consumerism. It was against this backdrop that one of the first popular serial comic figures was born: the Yellow Kid.