Max und Moritz — Plate 26 of 59

Two vignettes from Busch's picture-story show the tailor Buck goaded beyond endurance. In the upper panel, two crouching boys jeer at a figure leaning from a window while pine trees frame the scene in economical crosshatched strokes. Below, Buck charges out with his yard-stick raised, skirts flying, as the boys scatter into a burst of energetic ink lines suggesting dust and panic. Busch's draftsmanship — loose, kinetic, built on exaggerated silhouette — pulls the eye downward through cause and effect rather than left to right across a grid. This sequential picture-story format, published in Munich in 1865, directly influenced Rudolph Dirks when he launched The Katzenjammer Kids in 1897, making Busch a foundational figure in the lineage of the modern comic strip.