Katzenjammer Kids — 1903-02-22

Nine panels track Hans and Fritz through a single escalating scheme: the twins confess to each adult in turn—Ma, the Captain, Uncle Heinie—that they "cannot tell a lie," each admission revealing a fresh act of destruction (hatchet, rope, scissors, six pounds of blasting powder). Panel 7 delivers the punchline as the furnace erupts. Rudolph Dirks launched *The Katzenjammer Kids* in 1897 for Hearst's *New York Journal*, directly adapting Wilhelm Busch's *Max und Moritz*. The strip refined the visual grammar American comics still use: gridded panels, integrated speech balloons, and a cast of recurring characters whose personalities drive the gag rather than the situation. Sunday pages like this one were the direct commercial and formal ancestor of the comic book.