Lola Coming

David Claypoole Johnston's political satire depicts a woman arriving by sea as European powers bid farewell to America. A winged cherub pilots the vessel while figures on shore gesture in alarm or welcome. The print employs the visual sequence and narrative clarity that would define comics: multiple figures arranged across a unified scene, dialogue integrated into the image, and caricature as political commentary. Johnston, a prolific 19th-century printmaker, helped establish the visual conventions—exaggerated features, energetic linework, and sequential storytelling—that newspapers would later systematize into the comic strip format. This work reflects the anti-immigration anxieties of its moment through ethnic caricature, a standard rhetorical device in period political graphics.