ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

Alice Finds the Persimmon Tree

· August 28, 1904

Alice Finds the Persimmon Tree
This four-panel strip follows Alice as she discovers a fruit-bearing tree and shares its harvest with gathered children. The narrative unfolds through sequential panels with speech balloons—visual conventions that newspapers were still codifying in the early 1900s. Alice and her companions occupy the same illustrated space across panels, creating continuity of action and character. The artist uses landscape and seasonal detail to ground the story, while the children's reactions (surprise, delight, consumption) drive the gentle humor. Early newspaper comics like this one established the formal vocabulary of panel borders, dialogue placement, and character consistency that became foundational to the medium.

Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain