Early 20th Century Comic Strip Everett True Goes Viral

Yesterday television writer Tim Neenan (Childrens Hospital, NTSF:SD:SUV) posted a tweet of the early 20th century comic strip The Outbursts of Everett True, a two panel strip that featured its titular character using his tremendous size to absolutely wallop people actively being rude or ignorant in public. Each of the strips see the character enact vengeance against the likes of people coughing without covering their mouths, kicking dogs, being racist, or simply having bad breath, and offer the type of care-free frustration ending fantasies that clearly resonate with readers even today. This is no more clearer than the stats of Neenan’s tweet which as of this writing has 14.5k retweets and 46k likes.

Don Markstein’s Toonopedia reveals the history of Everett True, which was created by A.D. Condo and J.W. Raper who published the first strip July 22, 1905. The series was first titled A Chapter from the Career of Everett True before being shortened to “The Outbursts of Everett True,” with the strip running for years before concluding in 1927. As a result the character has found himself in the public domain for many years now.

The series was collected in the early parts of the 1900s as well with a complete “Outbursts of Everett True” book being released in 2015. In his introduction for the series in that collection, Trevor Blake writes: “Everett True was the law nearly a century before Judge Dredd rode into Megacity One. He was more self-assured than Mr. A and more punitive than The Punisher.”

Everett True revived

As the tweets below attest, readers have been rediscovering Everett True for decades now with Black Lightning creator Tony Isabella previously reviving him for the Comics Buyer’s Guide. In this version though the target of True’s wrath was was none other than comic artists, writers, publishers, and distributors. In the time since, people continue to discover him as the below reactions to his antics can attest

As the back cover of the 2015 collection reads, “Here is a man who could not take it. Here is a man who stood up.” We’ve collected some of the Everett True strips and the best reactions to the character below.

That’s really all he does

New hero

It is a pleasure, it really is

Please click this to read it

He IS Perfect

Mrs True also rules

EVERETT. TRUE.

Truer words

We are all so lucky to have learned of Everett True