From the exhibition
I Always Say
· early 20th century

A single-panel comic featuring Sez Gracie Allen, drawn by O. Soglow. The strip presents a stylized female figure wielding an oversized tuba while holding a beer mug, illustrating Allen's quip about pretzels and their social advantages at beer-serving gatherings. The exaggerated line work and bold curves reflect the graphic vocabulary emerging from newspaper comics of this era—simplified forms, dynamic poses, and hand-lettered text integrated with illustration. Allen, a vaudeville performer and radio personality, lent her name and comedic sensibility to this syndicated humor feature, typical of how entertainers' personalities were packaged for newspaper audiences during the rise of the comic strip as daily entertainment.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain