Early Comic Strips 1898-1916

By 1908, 75% of the Sunday papers in the United States featured comic strips. These three pages promoting The Chicago Sunday Tribune’s newly acquired European talent and revised comic section reflect the importance of comic strips to newspaper sales.

Lyonel Feininger, an American artist based in Munich, Germany, drew a beautiful comic strip filled with oddly shaped characters modeled on the popular Katzenjammer Kids. Feininger’s Kin-der-Kids debuted on May 6, 1906 , with the cartoon characters sailing out of New York ’s harbor in a bathtub. Four months later, Feininger created Wee Willie Winkie’s World.

Lyonel Feininger went on to become an important expressionist painter. The artist joined the staff of the Bauhaus School in 1919 and taught there until Hitler closed the school in the 1930s.