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No. 894: Ach, That No-Longer-Shifting Katzenjammer Mid-Point!

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Ach, That No-Longer-Shifting Katzenjammer Mid-Point!

First | Previous | 2024-12-12 | Next | Latest

Permanent URL: https://mezzacotta.net/itoons/?comic=894

Strip by: shiningpikablu252


Title: Ach, Those Katzenjammer Kids!
{Papa turns on a hose while Hans, Fritz, and their unnamed friend play marbles}
{Papa douses Hans, Fritz, and their unnamed friend with the hose}
{Papa returns to his chair and goes back to sleep; Hans, Fritz, and their unnamed friend look around}
{cut back to inside the house}
Fritz: Mud! Mama, you must haf been sleepvalking in der bog!
Hans: Better put on high shoes chust in case you go again
Mama: Gootness!
{Fritz and Hans laugh}
Mama: Dot bog iss purty deep in spots..I put on der Captain's vading boots
{Mama has returned to her chair and started dreaming; within the dream she appears to be reading "Jungle News", headline "Hanz und Fritz Katzenchammer solve all internachional questions"; author cannot verify accuracy of transcription due to the the low quality}
Mama: ZOZ
Fritz: It's a shame to vaste der ice cream, but fun iss fun
{cut to a scene of Miss Twiddle and the Captain arguing, the Captain in a hammock}
Captain: ...und I don't owe no'tink ta nobody!
Captain: Dot's becuz I'm a self-made man!
Miss Twiddle: Which is a horrible example of unskilled labor!

The author writes:

The Katzenjammer Kids, at time of this submission the longest-running comic strip in history. And yet, despite how long it ran, it's not as well-documented as it could be; it went out on so much of a whimper, it took years for people to figure out it had even gone out at all! (Reruns continue to this day, at least online.) That alone would complicate any effort to determine its mid-point much like some Square Root of Minus Garfield contributors have been known to do (that gag was stopped there after four installments, and it'll likely take Garfield ending before we see a fifth). Thankfully, once it was known that The Katzenjammer Kids had in fact ended, research had been undertaken to figure out when the last strip ran.

There are several ways one could potentially interpret just where the Katzenjammer mid-point would fall. The easiest would be through a straight interpretation of the calendar; that would put the mid-point as being in March 1952, a point where Peanuts was in its infancy, Popeye was still a multimedia force, and Garfield was decades away from being even thought of. This strip depicts this method; the first part is drawn from the first Katzenjammer strip in December 1897, the second part from the middle in March 1952, and the third part from the final Katzenjammer strip in 2006, and as the strips weren't structured identically, I opted to base the total panel count on the 1952 structure. It would be a bit harder to do so based on the number of strips; The Katzenjammer Kids was Sunday-only for the vast majority of its run but did have a brief stint as a daily in the late 1910s, and there had been a brief hiatus during the Spanish-American War, but without knowing exact numbers it would be difficult to place a mid-point in that situation. (Also during the 1910s, it technically became two strips; the second strip, The Captain and the Kids, ran until 1979 and also had its own brief run as a daily strip, in this case during the 1930s.)

We all know many records are made to be broken; should that strip continue unimpeded, Gasoline Alley–which already has far more strips under its belt due to having been daily for the vast majority of its own run–will surpass The Katzenjammer Kids in June 2028, and I'm pretty sure celebrations are already being prepared as we speak...and if this strip does indeed include the oldest material used in an iToons strip as of when this runs, surely I'm going to get one-upped at some point with even older material...

Original The Katzenjammer Kids strips: 1897-12-12 (via Origins of the Sunday Comics on GoComics, 1952-03-30, 2006-07-16 (limited free access).