Comics Competition
Dirks took time off from his Journal work to serve his country in the Spanish-American War and on other occasions. In 1912, he requested a year's leave to tour Europe with his wife. The request led to a rupture with the Journal. After a lengthy and notorious legal battle, the federal courts ruled that Dirks had the right to continue to draw his characters for a rival newspaper chain but that the Journal retained the right to the title The Katzenjammer Kids. Dirks thereupon began drawing a comic strip titled Hans and Fritz for the World, beginning in 1914. Anti-German sentiment during World War I led to the strip being renamed The Captain and the Kids. The Journal chose H. H. Knerr to continue The Katzenjammer Kids, and he and his successors have carried it on to the present day. The Captain and the Kids was distributed by United Feature Syndicate while King Features Syndicate handled The Katzenjammer Kids.
The success of The Katzenjammer Kids was due to more than just lucky circumstances. Dirks was a very gifted cartoonist with superb timing and a colorful gallery of different characters, including Hans and Fritz, Der Captain, Der Inspector and Mama. In the mid-1950s, a romantic swindler named Fineas Flub was introduced to the strip. Characters such as Rollo never appeared in Dirks' version of the strip.
Read more about this topic: Rudolph Dirks
Famous quotes containing the word competition:
“Playing games with agreed upon rules helps children learn to live by rules, establish the delicate balance between competition and cooperation, between fair play and justice and exploitation and abuse of these for personal gain. It helps them learn to manage the warmth of winning and the hurt of losing; it helps them to believe that there will be another chance to win the next time.”
—James P. Comer (20th century)