Katzenjammer Kids, comic strip pioneer, turns 110
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American Heritage has a great article on the original The Katzenjammer Kids – which turns 110 years old today. The original Katzenjammer Kids was a pioneer in cartooning – establishing the basic visual language used in comics today.
Around the turn of the twentieth century, two popular art forms began parallel transformations. Up until that point, photography and cartooning had each been used primarily to depict isolated scenes. But in the last years of the 1800s, static photographs evolved into movies; at the same time, stand-alone cartoons began to multiply across the panels of a newly emerging phenomenon, the comic strip. Both developments allowed artists tell stories rather than just capture vignettes: Just as film could now record motion, the comics had harnessed time. On December 12, 1897, a comic strip debuted that would set the standard for the new medium. The Katzenjammer Kids, now the world’s longest-running strip, made its first appearance in the New York Journal 110 years ago today.
In that single decade astride the turn of the twentieth century, the format of the comic strip crystallized. All its pieces locked into place between 1895 and 1905, buttressing a structure both durable and flexible enough to survive all the fleeting trends of the century to come. With multiple panels, the comics began to render time as well as space; by integrating text into drawings in thought and word balloons, cartoonists allowed us to read their characters’ minds. Permanent casts encouraged ongoing storylines, which brought readers back week after week. When all these elements finally combined, it represented the final step in the long evolution of the comic strip. None of the ingredients was new; in fact most had been in use for centuries. But they had awaited the perfect nexus of technology, commerce, and culture to bring them together.
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In the first five years, Dirks created the blueprint for all future comic strips. He did not invent word balloons or sequential panels, but he was the first cartoonist to use them both regularly; he also made standard the recurring cast of characters and ongoing narrative. “Because of him,” wrote the cultural historian Richard Marschall, “the comics told tales, not just jokes.” His design sense was perfectly suited for the crowded newspaper page. He quickly scrapped excess detail and clutter in favor of simple lines and bold fields of black that guided the reader through his panels. In Dirks’s strips, Americans first encountered the symbols that now form an unquestioned part of comics syntax: Straight lines indicate motion, beads of sweat mean fear or exertion, footprints show movement, stars equal pain.
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