From the exhibition
I Always Say: (Sez Gracie Allen)
· circa 1930s
A single-panel gag comic by O. Soglow, this strip features Gracie Allen—the radio comedian and wife of George Burns—at a gas station. The humor turns on wordplay: renaming a "gasoline" station a "gasaloon" would increase its popularity. The strip demonstrates how newspaper comics of this era borrowed celebrity personalities to boost readership. Soglow's clean line work and simple composition typify the daily comic format, which thrived alongside Sunday pages as essential fixtures of American newspapers and direct precursors to the comic book industry.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain
