People's Gas

A single-panel comic strip signed 'Stan,' featuring three working-class men in bowler hats confronting a large, menacing figure emerging from a gas meter. Speech balloons convey their exchange: one claims he didn't vote for the figure, another warns he'd win, and the third insists he predicted victory. The cartoon employs caricature and exaggeration characteristic of newspaper editorial comics of the era. The composition—figures clustered around a central threat—creates dramatic tension typical of social and political commentary strips that appeared in Sunday supplements and daily papers, where artists used recurring characters and visual symbols to address contemporary concerns about labor, industry, and public utilities.