The documentary tells the story about two brothers from Heide/North-Germany, who emigrated as children with their family to the USA. At the end of the 19th century the young men went to New York to try their luck as cartoonists. Comic strips were extremely popular in the New York Sunday newspapers at that time and are regarded as the first image-based mass medium to reach the poorer citizens – mostly immigrants – who themselves spoke only broken English. The anarchic cartoon "The Katzenjammer Kids," which lampoons the German immigrant milieu, made Rudolph Dirks famous. Rudolph's younger brother Gus Dirks is considered a pioneer of animal comics.