"The Katzenjammer Kids" is an American comic strip created by Rudolph Dirks and drawn by Harold H. Knerr for 35 years (1914 to 1949). It debuted December 12, 1897 in the American Humorist, the Sunday supplement of William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal. Dirks was the first cartoonist to regularly express dialogue in comic characters through the use of speech balloons.

After a series of legal battles between 1912 and 1914, Dirks left the Hearst organization and began a new strip, first titled "Hans and Fritz" and then "The Captain and the Kids". It featured the same characters seen in "The Katzenjammer Kids", which was continued by Knerr. The two separate versions of the strip competed with each other until 1979, when "The Captain and the Kids" ended its six-decade run. "The Katzenjammer Kids" published its last strip on January 1, 2006, but is still distributed by King Features, making it the oldest comic strip still in syndication and the longest-running ever.

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