Katzenjammer Kids — 1909-10-17

Twelve packed panels follow the Katzies—Hans and Fritz, the incorrigible German-American twins—through a Mexican bullfight gone haywire. The Mama, the Captain, and a matador named Fernando weave through the chaos as the boys smuggle an automobile into the arena, enraging the crowd and scattering the bull. Speech balloons mix English, broken Spanish, and mock-German dialect; a note promises translations at the page foot. Rudolph Dirks had launched the strip in 1897, directly adapting Wilhelm Busch's Max und Moritz, and in doing so handed American comics the recurring cast, sequential panel grammar, and expressive balloon lettering that Sunday supplement artists would build on for decades—structural foundations that eventually produced the comic book format itself.