Rodolphe Töpffer, a Swiss teacher in the 1830s, is often credited with inventing the modern comic strip. He used 'sequential art'—a series of drawings with captions—to tell satirical stories. However, the genre truly exploded in late 19th-century America during the 'Yellow Journalism' era. Richard F. Outcault's 'The Yellow Kid' (1895) is a pivotal work; it was the first to consistently use speech balloons to show dialogue. The battle between newspaper giants Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst over the rights to 'The Yellow Kid' gave rise to the term 'yellow journalism.' From these humble newspaper beginnings, comics evolved into a sophisticated literary medium, eventually leading to the Golden Age of comic books in the 1930s and the modern 'graphic novel' which explores complex, adult themes.