I found mention of this abortive crossover in a zine called LET'S STRIP, by Hurricane Heeran. Heeran writes that this cover of THE AMERICAN HUMORIST (a comics supplement for THE NEW YORK JOURNAL) marks "the first comic character to appear with a character from another series-- the Yellow Kid, paired with one of the pinup girls drawn by Archie Gunn."
It's definitely a crossover of artistic talents and reputations, since the Yellow Kid's creator Richard Outcault collaborates on this drawing. And of the two, the Yellow Kid, one of the first well-known characters of the comic-strip medium, certainly qualifies as an "icon" in the sense I've used for my meditations on crossovers.
However, from what I can gather of the oeuvre of the popular Mister Gunn, most of his drawings were illustrations of showgirls of the "New York musical comedy stage," as one online commentary puts it. I get no indication that Gunn produced any narrative devoted to characters, continuing or otherwise, except insofar as he may have illustrated characters produced for theatrical plays or for pulp magazines. So the unnamed showgirl paired above with the Yellow Kid is not really a character, much less an icon in my definition. And so this intersection of talents merely resembles a crossover, but is even less of one than the many comic-strip reprint magazines that showed disparate funny-paper characters meeting one another.
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