Katzenjammer Kids — 1902-11-23

Mrs. Katzenjammer's Thanksgiving Dinner spreads across eight crowded panels, opening with a formal holiday table where Alphonse, Gaston, Happy Hooligan, Friend Leon, Uncle Heinie, and the Captain exchange toasts. By panel three, Happy Hooligan has a bone stuck in his throat; by panel four he is thrashing through the room; by five the furniture is demolished and someone shouts for the police; fire breaks out in panel seven and hoses drench everyone in eight. Rudolf Dirks launched *The Katzenjammer Kids* in 1897 for the New York *Journal*, directly modeling it on Wilhelm Busch's *Max und Moritz*. These Sunday pages—with their sequential panels, integrated speech balloons, and recurring cast—were the direct forerunner of the comic book format that would crystallize four decades later.