Our Next President

This satirical print employs the visual conventions emerging in newspaper comics: a single panel with text framing the joke. The image depicts a woman in Victorian dress labeled "Belvia Lockwood," the 1884 presidential candidate of the Equal Rights Party. The caption "But Do-n't Give It Away" suggests anxiety about women's political participation during this period. The work exemplifies how newspapers and popular prints used exaggerated portraiture and gendered humor to comment on contemporary politics. While the style predates modern comic strips, such images established visual-textual relationships that would define the medium—combining illustration with typography to create layered political meaning for mass audiences.