Katzenjammer Kids — 1903-04-19

Six panels follow a large man—apparently the Katzenjammer household's Captain or Papa figure—hanging upside-down from a stovepipe, gripping it while a companion goes for wire. Children arrive, compare him to the Statue of Liberty, and eventually the pipe gives way, dumping him onto the floor in panel five. The strip closes with a threat to advertise for a prize-fighter willing to adopt the mischief-makers. Rudolph Dirks launched *The Katzenjammer Kids* in the *New York Journal* in 1897, drawing directly on Wilhelm Busch's *Max und Moritz*. Its recurring cast, sequential panels, and integrated speech balloons made it one of the foundational texts of American comics—the Sunday page format it helped establish would within four decades be repackaged as the comic book.