Katzenjammer Kids — 1903-08-02

Six panels follow Hans and Fritz, the incorrigible Katzenjammer twins, as they convince the rotund Captain to let them trim his whiskers — then catapult him, hammock and all, between two trees using a lawn-mower as a lever. The gag escalates cleanly: panel 1 sets the con, panels 2–4 wind the slapstick mechanism, panel 5 delivers the payoff collision, panel 6 ends in cheerful defiance. 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 helped codify the visual grammar that Sunday newspaper pages — forerunners of the comic book — carried into millions of American homes each week.