The Katzenjammer Kids first ran in a supplement to the New York Journal in 1897. It was created by Rudolph Dirks, inspired by an old German children's story, Max and Moritz. In 1912, Dirks took a break from drawing, so the Hearst newspaper syndicate brought in artist Harold Knerr to continue the strip. A lawsuit ensued, and two comic strips emerged. Knerr would continue to draw The Katzenjammer Kids, while Dirks would run his own version, The Captain and the Kids (initially called Hans und Fritz). The Captain and the Kids ran (continued by Dirks' son, John) until 1979. Knerr drew The Katzenjammer Kids until his death in 1949. It has continued to the present day under different artists. This volume includes The Katzenjammer Kids pages from several issues of Ace Comics, and four issues of The Captain and the Kids.

American Horror Story meets the dark comedy of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis as Cat searches for a way to escape her high school. A tale of family, love, tragedy, and masks—the ones others make for us, and the ones we make for ourselves. Katzenjammer will haunt fans of Chelsea Pitcher’s This Lie Will Kill You and E. Lockhart’s We Were Liars. Cat lives in her high school. She never leaves, and for a long time her school has provided her with everything she needs. But now things are changing. The hallways contract and expand along with the school’s breathing, and the showers in the bathroom run a bloody red. Cat’s best friend is slowly turning into cardboard, and instead of a face, Cat has a cat mask made of her own hardened flesh. Cat doesn’t remember why she is trapped in her school or why half of them—Cat included—are slowly transforming. Escaping has always been the one impossibility in her school’s upside-down world. But to save herself from the eventual self-destruction all the students face, Cat must find the way out. And to do that, she’ll have to remember what put her there in the first place. Using chapters alternating between the past and the present, acclaimed author Francesca Zappia weaves a spine-tingling, suspenseful, and haunting story about tragedy and the power of memories. Fans of Marieke Nijkamp’s This Is Where It Ends and Karen McManus’s One of Us Is Lying will lose themselves in the pages of this novel—or maybe in the treacherous hallways of the school. Includes interior illustrations from the author.

Comic book studies has developed as a solid academic discipline, becoming an increasingly vibrant field in the United States and globally. A growing number of dissertations, monographs, and edited books publish every year on the subject, while world comics represent the fastest-growing sector of publishing. The Oxford Handbook of Comic Book Studies looks at the field systematically, examining the history and evolution of the genre from a global perspective. This includes a discussion of how comic books are built out of shared aesthetic systems such as literature, painting, drawing, photography, and film. The Handbook brings together readable, jargon-free essays written by established and emerging scholars from diverse geographic, institutional, gender, and national backgrounds. In particular, it explores how the term "global comics" has been defined, as well the major movements and trends that will drive the field in the years to come. Each essay will help readers understand comic books as a storytelling form grown within specific communities, and will also show how these forms exist within what can be considered a world system of comics.

"Written as a satire on the comic devices cartoonists use, [this] book quickly became a textbook for art students. Walker researched cartoons around the world to collect this international set of cartoon symbols. The names he invented for them now appear in dictionaries."--Page 4 of cover

"Mit dose kids, society is nix!" So said the Inspector about the Katzenjammer kids, but he could have been speaking of all comic strips in their formative years at the turn of the last century. From the very first color Sunday supplement, comics were a driving force in newspaper sales, even though their crude and often offensive content placed them in a whirl of controversy. Sunday comics presented a wild parody of the world and the culture that surrounded them. Society didn't stand a chance. These are the origins of the American comic strip, born at a time when there were no set styles or formats, when artistic anarchy helped spawn a new medium. Here are the earliest offerings from known greats like R. F. Outcault, George McManus, Winsor McCay, and George Herriman, along with the creations of more than fifty other superb cartoonists; over 150 Sunday comics dating from 1895 to 1915.

Mr. and Mrs. Badd's mischievous little babies race around town as people treat them to pastries, a movie, cheeseburgers, and strawberry malts.