The Katzenjammer Kids Give a Few Imitations

Six panels follow Hans and Fritz as they perform imitations for Mama and an audience of dolls on a bench. Panel 1: a boy announces he will imitate Uncle Heinie. Panel 2: he tumbles headfirst, mimicking a pratfall. Panel 3: the Old Captain is impersonated, to Mama's approving "Well well!" Panels 4–6 shift to a spanking gag — one boy imitates a naughty Katzenjammer child receiving punishment, then gets the real thing. Dirks drew the strip in a loose, energetic line descended directly from Wilhelm Busch's Max und Moritz. Launched in the New York Journal in 1897, the strip established foundational comic-strip conventions: sequential panels, integrated speech balloons, and a fixed cast of recurring characters whose mischief reset each Sunday — structural habits that American comic books would inherit wholesale.