Two cartoon strips were the vehicle for surveying perceptions of power use in everyday situations. A stratified cross-sectional sample of 430 adults in Los Angeles were interviewed. Their task was to choose a behavior, illustrated by a cartoon panel, most likely to be employed by a policeman in one instance and a nurse in another to secure compliance with a request. Also, the person interviewed was to choose the reaction of the cartoon subject to the request. Frameworks for analyzing the data were patterns of compliance; choice of power base, whether informational, legitimate, coercive, expert, referent, or reward; compliance contingent on power base; and demographic difference. Among the demographic factors of age, education, and sex, age differences generated the most striking effects. Use of the cartoon as a medium to study perception of power was dictated not solely because of its feasibility but because of a suspected underlying affinity between the message and the medium. Emphasis should be placed on the fact that the data represent perceptions of behavior, not actual behavior. (Author/JH)