What a century of New Yorker cartoons about the subway tell us about ourselves

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While most commuters bury themselves in books, catch up on emails or zone out with noise-cancelling headphones, a rare breed of straphanger studies how people use the transit system and interact with each other.

Those would be the New Yorker’s exalted cartoonists, who are celebrated in a new exhibit showcasing 100 years of cartoons about the subway.

The show makes clear that subway etiquette has been fodder for the magazine since it was first published in 1925.

Jodi Shapiro, the curator of the New York Tr