Rudolph Dirks - Further reading

Strip cartoonist, born in Heinde, C Germany. His family moved to Chicago when he was seven. He started selling joke cartoons to Life magazine in 1894, then joined the New York Journal where he created the long-running strip, The Katzenjammer Kids (1897). He later retitled his characters as The Captain and the Kids (1914), while the original Katzenjammer Kids continued in parallel for decades. He retired in 1958, and his strip was continued by his son, John.

Rudolph Dirks (February 26, 1877 – April 20, 1968) was one of the earliest and most successful comic strip artists.

Dirks was born in Heide, Germany to Johannes and Margaretha Dirks. His older brother, Gus Dirks, moved to New York City and found work as a cartoonist. He held several jobs as an illustrator, culminating in a position with William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal.

The circulation war between the Journal and Joseph Pulitzer's New York World was raging. Dirks's editor, Rudolph Block, asked him to develop a Sunday comic based on Wilhelm Busch's cautionary tale, Max und Moritz. Dirks submitted his sketches, Block dubbed them the Katzenjammer Kids, and the first strip appeared on December 12, 1897.

Dirks took time off from his Journal work to serve his country in the Spanish-American War, and on other occasions. 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 Katzenjammer Kids. Dirks thereupon began drawing a comic strip titled Hans and Fritz for the World, beginning in 1914.

Dirks made substantial contributions to the graphic language of comic strips.

As a pastime, Dirks produced serious paintings associated with the Ashcan School.

Dirks incrementally passed his cartooning duties on to his son John Dirks, who took over The Captain and the Kids in 1958. The elder Dirks died in New York City in 1968.

Further reading

There are chatty articles about Rudolph Dirks in these books:

Sheridan, Martin.