“Clever Jack B. Yeats”: His Work for Comics and Humour Periodicals

Abstract

This chapter primarily centres on the comic strips produced by Yeats for comics such as The Funny Wonder, Comic Cuts, The Big Budget, and Puck, between c. 1892 and 1917. Yeats also produced single-panel cartoons for various humour periodicals immediately before and during this period, and it will be important to examine this material also, along with more strictly illustrative contributions to the comic papers. Though he ceased contributing to the comics in 1917, Yeats continued to produce cartoon material, some of it in sequential form, for Punch magazine for more than two decades after that point, and there will also be a focus on that work. The chapter aims to track the evolution of Yeats’ style and his various approaches to the medium over the course of his career.