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.