There were actually Krazy Kat cartoons made in 1916. My favorite part was how they used speech balloons instead of intertitles (what with it being silent and all)
I once wrote a paper for a silent film class about the concurrent rise of comics and silent film, (what with Yellow Kid and the invention of the motion picture camera both happening in 1895), and along with Winsor McCay's animations, these cartoons helped make my paper awesome.