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From the exhibition

Outbursts of Everett True

· July 20, 1909

Outbursts of Everett True
A two-panel gag strip featuring the irascible Everett True, who responds to a companion's claim about proper tent-pitching with a violent demonstration. True yanks a sapling from the ground in the first panel, then hurls it—and his hapless friend—through the air in the second. The strip employs the visual grammar fundamental to early newspaper comics: sequential panels, speech balloons, exaggerated expressions, and physical humor. Appearing in Sunday and daily editions from 1905 onward, *Outbursts of Everett True* helped establish the short-form comedic strip as a fixture of American newspapers, influencing countless cartoonists in the medium's formative decades.

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