How William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer’s newspaper battles kickstarted the modern era of comics:
The sudden explosion of color comics had been facilitated by new high-speed four-color printing presses, but “lead pipe” may have been the operative term in Hearst’s boast. The original comics were designed to stun—both their startling graphics and their rambunctious antics. “Mit dose kids, society is nix!” an adult character says of Hans and Fritz, the daemonic, chortling child protagonists of The Katzenjammer Kids which, although inspired by the German artist Wilhelm Busch’s humorous picture book Max und Moritz, may be considered America’s first fully realized comic strip.
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