Printed 111 years ago today in The Tacoma Times. I modified the brightness/contrast, removed artifacts, and cleaned up the text a bit, see the original.
Found on the Library of Congress site.
this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2024
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Everett True Comics
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A place to appreciate the twentieth century comic character Everett True of "The Outbursts of Everett True." Feel free to check out the sticky.
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I think point 3 is a single layer joke without any social commentary. It's just a "Everett true hits everyone but he folds to his wife" kind of joke.
I think him hitting his wife would cross the line further than the former. The former almost empowers women in the sense that her wife has equal say as Everett (in a comical sense), the further is just a large man abusing his wife.
If it's okay for Everett to physically assault people he disagrees with, it's okay for his wife to assault him (given the "take" is correct). It's in poor taste for him to assault his wife.
At least that's how I see it.
Hmmm.... I think you're right. It indeed seems to be an example of the Henpecked Husband trope where the joke is that he terrorises the town but in his own house she is queen. But I think there's also a civilizing element in that it shows Everett being restrained by his wife, who is represented as the responsible center of the family and home. So in a sense, Everett is a good guy because he backs down and does not go against family/home. In the strict male/female role dichotomy of the time, just as Everett outbursts against societal forces that oppress everyday man, so does Mrs True outburst against societal forces (represented by Everett, since he's the center of the strip) that oppress everyday woman.
I'm still a little uneasy about the double standard that women can't be abusers, and the fact that Mrs True is stuck in the gender roles of her time, but at least the strip attempts to consider the perspective of the women who are stuck in those roles.