In my younger days I read this comic strip without realising the important role it played in the development of comic strips throughout the world.

The Katzenjammer Kids is the world’s longest-running comic strip.

It made its debut in 1897 in William Randolph Hearst’s Sunday edition of the New York Journal.

The creator was German immigrant Rudolph Dirks, but a long-time artist was Harold H Knerr.

It created balloons with the words of the characters, something new at the time.

The strip revolves around two boys, who always seemed to find trouble and often found themselves in conflict with others, especially their parents and school officials.

The thing that surprised me was that the word katzenjammer was an American colloquial word.

The first use I could find came in 1849 in a US congress report that said a group of men had kept up a drunken frolic all night – “a general kakenjammer”.

In 1948 came a report of a person who tried to drink himself to death in “one of the most colossal katzenjammers ever recorded”.

I had trouble reconciling the two images – one of a hangover and the other of two ­children.

But the comic strip adopted the tenor of a confused uproar, the rebellion against authority, rather than a hangover.

The two children were called Hans and Fritz and the strip had a German flavour.

The strip had a tumultuous existence and at least one legal battle ensued when, so I have been told, the creator wanted to take a holiday but the newspaper objected.

The strip made its debut in the New York Journal because the paper’s editor, Rudolf Block, was seeking a strip that could rival R.F. Outcault’s The Yellow Kid.

During the war years the title was changed to The Shenanigan Kids.

My big dictionary says katzenjammer is American colloquial that represents the wailing of cats or a hangover. Some people find Dutch connections also, and this was emphasised during the war years.

My book Panel by Panel, by John Ryan, described The Katzenjammer Kids as “the most important strip in the history of comics”. It led to many imitations.

The word led to a few bands with the word katzenjammer in the name, although I can’t understand why a band would include the word that represents the wailing of a cat.

Blackwoor’s Edinburgh Magazine of 1884, in trying to describe katzenjammer, said: “In English you would call it reaction; but whole pages of English cannot express the sick, empty, weary, vacant feeling.”

Some organisations these days are advertising hangover pills “to avoid a katzenjammer”.

I don’t think the kids in The Katzenjammer Kids had a hangover; they were simply unruly, or perhaps even disagreeable.

Incidentally, if you are interested, a band called the Katzenjammer will tour throughout Europe soon. But I keep thinking about the wailing of cats.

And I wonder where you can find the comic strip The Katzenjammer Kids these days.

lauriebarber.com; lbword@midcoast.com.au.