Katzenjammer Kids — 1902-09-28

A full Sunday page titled "Good Ship 'Sinker' Goes Down With All Hands" brings together characters from several Hearst strips — Hans and Fritz, Alphonse and Gaston, Happy Hooligan, and Gloomy Gus — in a shared nautical disaster. The submarine Sinker departs a dock with elaborate ceremony, sinks almost immediately, and the survivors clamber out soaking wet. Eight panels build a clockwork comic rhythm: polite one-upmanship between Alphonse and Gaston delays everything fatally, while the Katzenjammer boys cause havoc below. Drawn by Rudolf Dirks, F. B. Opper, and "Bunny" (Carl Ed), this crossover page exemplifies the Hearst Sunday supplement at full stretch — recurring cast, sequential panels, integrated speech balloons — the direct structural ancestor of every comic book page that followed.