The mischievous brothers Hans and Fritz Katzenjammer were invented by German-born cartoonist Rudolph Dirks in 1897. Along with the Yellow Kid, Happy Hooligan, and Little Nemo, they became pioneering stars of the American newspaper funny paper sections that burgeoned in the early 1900s. The Kids, along with their Mama, the Captain, and the Inspector, are also among the very few comics characters ever to have two separate and independent pages devoted to their activities.

The Kids—Fritz was the blond one and Hans the dark-haired brother in the original cartoons—made their debut in William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal on Sunday, December 12, 1897. Dirks was twenty when he was asked by his editor to come up with a feature in the vein of the fiendish youths Max and Moritz, created some three decades earlier in Germany by Wilhelm Busch. Much more than imitations, the Brothers...