Books, Arts & Manners: Farewell to the Katzenjammer Kids

When I read of Rudolf Dirks’ death at the age of 91, the most surprising thing to me was that he had still been alive until this year. Somehow, I had thought of him as dead for decades. I had seen his Katzenjammer kids, Hans and Fritz, since my childhood, and I had considered them part of the pre-Twenties past, long since superseded by bouncily anatomical females and the paranoia of Li’l Abner. Yet Dirks in the Sixties, assisted by his son, was still drawing the comic strip, The Captain and the Kids, that he had originated seventy years before; and it was still being distributed by United Features to a diminishing number of papers across the country.

At the end, the Katzenjammers appeared obscurely in six colored panels that took up a third of an inner page of the weekly comic supplement. In the old days the Katzenjammer family had occupied a whole garishly-colored Sunday front page, besides appearing six times during the week in black and white. Whether children of a more sophisticated comics age have still been following the pranks of Hans and Fritz I do not know, but I doubt if there is anyone over forty who could not instantly identify the dark-thatched Hans or Fritz with his peaked blond forelock; Mama Katzenjammer’s gleaming triple pug; der Captain, his broom-like whiskers almost obliterating the brass buttons of his naval jacket; der Professor with his white beard and fuzzy felt top hat.

FR

About the Author

Francis Russell

Featured Tags

When I read of Rudolf Dirks’ death at the age of 91, the most surprising thing to me was that he had still been alive until this year. Somehow, I had thought of him as dead for decades. I had seen his Katzenjammer kids, Hans and Fritz, since my childhood, and I had considered them part of the pre-Twenties past, long since superseded by bouncily anatomical females and the paranoia of Li’l Abner. Yet Dirks in the Sixties, assisted by his son, was still drawing the comic strip, The Captain and the Kids, that he had originated seventy years before; and it was still being distributed by United Features to a diminishing number of papers across the country.

At the end, the Katzenjammers appeared obscurely in six colored panels that took up a third of an inner page of the weekly comic supplement. In the old days the Katzenjammer family had occupied a whole garishly-colored Sunday front page, besides appearing six times during the week in black and white. Whether children of a more sophisticated comics age have still been following the pranks of Hans and Fritz I do not know, but I doubt if there is anyone over forty who could not instantly identify the dark-thatched Hans or Fritz with his peaked blond forelock; Mama Katzenjammer’s gleaming triple pug; der Captain, his broom-like whiskers almost obliterating the brass buttons of his naval jacket; der Professor with his white beard and fuzzy felt top hat.