Militant Mary

A single-panel comic strip by Steve Hyde featuring Mary, a bespectacled character in a long dress, armed with what appears to be a rifle or stick. The dialogue establishes her defiant personality: she has never been unprincipled, remains proper in conduct, yet occasionally indulges in wild behavior. The strip exemplifies early newspaper comic conventions—simple line drawing, prominent lettering, and a single recurring character whose personality drives the humor. Such strips populated Sunday and daily newspaper pages in the 1910s, establishing the visual and narrative vocabulary that would define American comics: the speech balloon, the stock character type, and the gag-driven format that became foundational to comic book storytelling.