Militant Mary

A single-panel comic strip by Steve Hyde featuring a determined female character holding a rifle. The protagonist addresses the reader directly, confessing confusion about her sudden romantic feelings before declaring that shared delusions bond them all. The composition employs speech balloons as the primary narrative device, with the figure rendered in simple line work characteristic of early 1910s newspaper comics. Strips like this one populated the Sunday funny pages and dailies, establishing the visual conventions—recurring characters, word balloons, expressive figure drawing—that would define comic art. The recurring "Mary" character type reflected popular culture's engagement with contemporary social debates.