The Katzenjammer Kids is an American comic strip

Comic strip

A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....

 created by the German immigrant Rudolph Dirks

Rudolph Dirks

Rudolph Dirks was one of the earliest and most noted comic strip artists....

 and drawn by Harold H. Knerr

Harold Knerr

Harold Hering Knerr was an American comic strip creator, who signed his work H. H. Knerr. He was best known as the writer-artist of The Katzenjammer Kids for 35 years....

 for 37 years (1912 to 1949). It debuted December 12, 1897 in the American Humorist, the Sunday supplement of William Randolph Hearst

William Randolph Hearst

William Randolph Hearst was an American business magnate and leading newspaper publisher. Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887, after taking control of The San Francisco Examiner from his father...

's New York Journal.

After a series of legal battles between 1912 and 1914, Dirks left the Hearst organization and began a new strip, first titled Hans und Fritz and then The Captain and the Kids.