Mary Worth #1 (1956) is a full-color comic-book one-shot from Argo Publications, reprinting the long-running newspaper soap-opera strip Mary Worth. The title character is a compassionate, silver-haired widow who drifts into the lives of troubled friends, neighbors, and strangers — and gently sets them straight. This issue's lead story sends Mary to Washington, where Senator Blackston's entanglement with his secretary stirs his wife's jealousy, and it falls to Mary to sort things out — classic mid-century melodrama drawn from the strip's 1948 storyline.

The book sits at the crossroads of newspaper comics and comic books. Mary Worth evolved out of Martha Orr's Depression-era strip Apple Mary (1934) and was reshaped by writer Allen Saunders and artist Ken Ernst into one of America's most enduring story strips. Its characters had already appeared in comic books via Famous Funnies, Pines, Magazine Enterprises, and Harvey's Love Stories of Mary Worth (1949–50); this single Argo issue of March 1956, syndicated through Publishers Syndicate, was a late entry in that reprint lineage.

Today Mary Worth #1 appeals to collectors of newspaper-strip reprints, soap-opera-comics fans, and Ken Ernst admirers. The strip itself remains in syndication into the 21st century and has become a pop-culture punchline (famously parodied on The Simpsons). As a widely available public-domain reprint, this issue offers an accessible snapshot of 1950s domestic drama and of the woman Li'l Abner's Al Capp once lampooned as "Mary Wart."