A Crowded Life in Comics – Rudolph Dirks

–Rudolph Dirks panel 1917–

The Other Katzenjammer Kids

by Rick Marschall

In these installments of memoirs I will return more than once to Rudolph Dirks, the father of the comic strip. He was the primal source of sequential panels, a cast of characters, and the signs and symbols of cartoonists – motion lines, stars of pain, dotted vision lines, etc. – originating, or at least codifying, these elements as essential components of strips.

I will also refer more than occasionally to his son John Dirks. From Rudy I had the briefest personal encounter, in his nonage (he was born in 1877; d. 1968). I was born in 1949 (still kicking when last I checked), but we did correspond. His son John I knew much better, and visited him frequently at his homes in Ossining NY; later Old Lyme CT; and at his vacation home – Rudy’s old studio – in Ogunquit ME. For a while I was John’s editor on Captain and the Kids, and he arranged to have me be Guest Curator of an exhibition at the Ogunquit Museum of Art.

Finally, I likely will return to the landmark set of 20 commemorative stamps, “Comic Strip Classics” for the United States Postal Service, a project for which I was hired to provide artwork, consult on choices, write info and the book that was published.

–Rudolph Dirks stamp post office document–

So, having shared what I will tell, I scarcely have room to tell what I am telling. Anyway, I want to explain a couple of surface-skimming episodes in my precious friendship with Dirks vater und sohn, and honoring Hans and Fritz on stamps.

Rudy was still alive and still producing Captain and the Kids when I was young. I wrote a fan letter around 1962, and eventually received a nice answer, with an original Sunday page original. I thanked him and asked if I could visit – from the return address I saw that he lived on East 86th Street in Manhattan. My family lived in the New Jersey suburbs then, having moved from the German section of Queens, Ridgewood; and several relatives lived the German section of Manhattan – Yorkville, whose center thoroughfare was 86th Street. My father’s aunt lived in an apartment two blocks from Rudolph Dirks.

–Rudolph Dirks letter 1962–

So I didn’t wait for a possibly slow reply this time. Taking a chance, I took a bus to New York City (armed with drawings to be critiqued), but my real goal was to meet the Master  and extract information about the “Old Testament” days of comics history. The Yellow Kid coalesced in his definitive personality and showcase in 1895-96. But the Katzenjammer Kids were born, as a pair of male Athenas, their mischievous personas set from the start. Likely inspired by Wilhelm Busch’s Max and Moritz in Germany (and in their first week, never again to be seen, was a third brother), there they were… and are. Never have their personalities or even costumes changed since then.

(A length interview I conducted with John Dirks, digging into matters as minute as whether Rudy retained a German accent from his youth in Schleswig-Holstein, appeared in Hogan’s Alley number 20.)

–John Dirks rough for stamp–

In any event, I realize that I was on quest to encounter Living History. Rudy was ill on that first call, and as his wife held the door we exchanged some conversation – not enough! – from his room where he sat. He was merely elderly, with a shock of white hair; I suppose I expected him to have a foot wrapped in a bandage for the gout; a heating pad on his head; and other accouterments of… well, his own comic-strip world.

I will fast-forward here past the visits and friendship with John and Mary Dirks.  A wonderful, warm, creative couple. Some day here I will tell the story of his syndicate rudely ending his strip, and how I fomented a minor public protest campaign. The syndicate was embarrassed… apologized to John… and since “The End” was ordained, took satisfaction in their humiliation. As I say, later.

–John Dirks pen and ink for stamp–

In 1994 I was invited to consult with the US Postal Service as they prepared a set of comic-strip stamps for their “American Classics” series. The designer said that he was getting desperate to find someone could provide decent images of the 20 famous comic characters (the first consultant provided almost laughably inappropriate, almost irrelevant images). So… I was hired, and had a year of interesting and often absurd adventures.

But one of the things I determined to do was have John Dirks draw the image for the Katzenjammer Kids. Every other cartoonist represented was deceased, except for Dale Messick (Brenda Starr) who was included mostly because they wanted least one woman cartoonist represented. I lobbied for Edwina, Rose O’Neill, and Grace Drayton to no avail.

–John Dirks color guide for stamp–

They accepted the idea that John, son of the creator of Hans and Fritz, and their decades-long papa, would do the art, or least submit same for approval. You will see here, in steps, an original panel done by his father (in 1917) that I thought would be a good image, displaying Captain, Kids, Inspector, and mischief. Then John’s rough; then his pen-and-ink drawing; then his color guide; then the stamp as it appeared in a Postal Service internal approval document.

Pure nostalgia!  – I don’t mean the Dirks team, or comics history, or the back-story of the postage stamp. I mean… when a stamp cost only 32 cents! Dod gast it.

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