Katzenjammer Kids — 1905-02-12

"Der Captain's Walentine!" Six panels follow the Captain's Valentine's Day scheme: he buys balloons, watches Hans and Fritz craft a heart-decorated box with industrial glue, then gets thoroughly stuck inside it — whiskers, coat, and all — ending flat on the floor while a crewman hollers that dinner's ready. The Captain bellows back that he's busy making a valentine "for Hans unt Fritz." Rudolph Dirks launched *The Katzenjammer Kids* in *New York Journal* in 1897, consciously modeled on Wilhelm Busch's *Max und Moritz*. Its recurring cast, causally linked panels, and speech balloons folded directly into character action established conventions that Sunday supplement artists across Hearst and Pulitzer papers would standardize — the very infrastructure American comic books inherited thirty years later.