Katzenjammer Kids — 1909-11-07

"The Katzies Are Still in Texas!" unfolds across twelve color panels tracking the Captain's comic misadventure with a bucking horse. Wearing his signature polka-dot red shirt, the barrel-chested Captain insists he can ride easily, is promptly thrown, then secretly coaches himself back onto the animal — only to be thrown again while the boys watch. The gag turns on repetition and humiliation, the strip's engine since Rudolph Dirks launched *The Katzenjammer Kids* in *The New York Journal* in 1897, directly inspired by Wilhelm Busch's *Max und Moritz*. Dirks codified sequential panel storytelling and integrated speech balloons as true narrative tools. These Sunday pages — distributed nationally, collected, and reprinted — are the direct ancestors of the comic book format.