Katzenjammer Kids — 1902-12-14

Eight panels follow Uncle Heinie attempting to hang a holly wreath by climbing a ladder steadied—badly—by the Kids and their circle of chaos-agents: a mouse startles the fat woman, a black cat bolts, the dog scatters, and the ladder tilts, sending Heinie airborne before he crashes headlong to the floor. The final panel leaves him dazed and refusing a rematch. Rudolph Dirks launched *The Katzenjammer Kids* in *The New York Journal* in 1897, adapting Wilhelm Busch's *Max und Moritz* into the recurring-character, multi-panel Sunday page format that directly shaped the comic book's architecture. Speech balloons, sequential cause-and-effect gags, and slapstick timing codified here became the structural DNA every subsequent cartoonist inherited.