From the exhibition
Little Alice Assists at the Duchess's Reception
· December 28, 1902

This Sunday comic strip adapts Lewis Carroll's *Alice's Adventures in Wonderland* for newspaper audiences, featuring Alice in polka-dotted dress presiding over a chaotic reception. The six-panel narrative unfolds left to right, top to bottom—the visual grammar of sequential storytelling that newspaper comics pioneered. Dialogue balloons advance the gag as guests arrive, pile into the room, and eventually tumble in a heap, culminating in Alice's transformation of the space into an orderly establishment advertised on a sign. The strip demonstrates how early-twentieth-century newspaper comics borrowed freely from literary sources while developing the panel structure, speech balloons, and sight gags that became the foundation of American comic books.
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