Katzenjammer Kids — 1913-02-23

"The King of the Cannibal (Reformed) Islands!" Twelve panels follow Hans and Fritz, the incorrigible Katzenjammer twins, accompanying the Captain and the King on a royal carriage outing. A real lion disrupts the procession, sending adults scrambling across a tightrope-and-net contraption while the boys watch gleefully. The gag resolves with the Captain scolding the twins for orchestrating the chaos — they had smuggled the lion themselves. Rudolf Dirks launched *The Katzenjammer Kids* in 1897, directly inspired by Wilhelm Busch's *Max und Moritz*, establishing the recurring-cast comic strip as a distinct American form. His innovations — sequential panels, integrated speech balloons, consistent character designs — became the structural foundation every subsequent comic strip and eventually comic book inherited.