 His comic strip "Lady Bountiful", debuted in Heart's newspapers in 1902 as a Sunday-comics filler, and the following year jumped to publisher Joseph Pulitzer's "The New York World", appearing as the cover feature of May 3, 1903.The strip's star, notes comics scholar Don Markstein "has been cited by many comics historians and commentators as the very first" female protagonist of a comic strip, cautioning, "Maybe she is.It's certainly difficult to think of any that were in print before her 1902 debut."