Militant Mary

A single-panel comic strip by Steve Hyde featuring Mary, a bespectacled woman in motion. The character declares her impartiality despite personal prejudice, cheering for the winning side regardless of her sympathies—a commentary on divided loyalties during the opening weeks of World War I. The strip employs the visual vocabulary of early newspaper comics: a bold border frame, speech balloon, simple line drawing, and a recurring character type. Such dailies and Sunday pages formed the foundation of American comic art, establishing the sequential narrative and character-driven humor that would define the medium.