Katzenjammer Kids — 1905-12-10

Twelve panels carry Hans and Fritz through a Christmas swindle: the Inspector is coaxed into funding a 'present for der Captain,' the adults hold a holiday feast toasting the absent boys, and meanwhile the twins spend the collected money on dynamite powder — sold as smokeless — which detonates spectacularly on the Captain. Rudolph Dirks originated *The Katzenjammer Kids* in 1897 for the *New York Journal*, directly adapting Wilhelm Busch's *Max und Moritz*. The strip was among the first to lock recurring characters, sequential numbered panels, and integrated speech balloons into a repeatable weekly format — the structural conventions that Sunday newspaper pages exported directly into the first comic books of the 1930s.