PENNGROVE, Calif. (AP) – Dale Messick, whose long-running comic strip “Brenda Starr, Reporter” gave her entry into the male world of the funny pages, has died at age 98. Messick, whose strip ran in 250 newspapers at its peak in the 1950s, died Tuesday, said her daughter, Starr Rohrman, who had been caring for her mother in Sonoma County. Messick once said Brenda had “everything I didn’t have.” But she charmed acquaintances with spunk and style worthy of her redheaded creation.
Mixing hot copy with high fashion, Brenda plunged from one thrilling adventure to another, sassing her tough-talking editor, Mr. Livwright, and sometimes filing her copy with the only person left in the newsroom, the cleaning woman. As World War II raged Brenda did her part, parachuting into action - every red hair in place. “I used to get letters from girl reporters saying that their lives were nowhere near as exciting as Brenda’s,” Messick told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1986. “I told them that if I made Brenda’s life like theirs, nobody would read it.”
Born in South Bend, Ind., on April 11, 1906, with the name Dalia - a moniker she jettisoned to further her career - Messick developed her artistic skills early, scribbling illustrations on her schoolbooks and telling stories to her classmates. She studied art and got a job at a greeting card company, only to quit in a huff - in the depths of the Depression - when her boss dropped her pay to make a new hire. Her break came when her work came to the attention of another woman, Mollie Slott, who worked for publisher Joseph M. Patterson. Patterson, reputed to be no fan of women cartoonists, wouldn’t take the slot for daily publication but it began running in the Sunday comics in June 1940. The name came from a '30s debutante; she borrowed the figure and flowing red hair from film star Rita Hayworth. The love of Brenda’s life was the mysterious Basil St. John, a man with an eyepatch and a mysterious illness that could be cured only with a serum taken from black orchids growing in the Amazon jungle.
Loved that strip back in the ‘60s (though it’s not why I became a Girl Reporter). Just the fact that Brenda had a big ol’ dyke friend (Hank O’Hare—took me awhile to get that reference!) and lived at the Lovely Arms Apartments.
I also have a 1940s book, Brenda Starr—Girl Reporter, I’ll have to get it down off the bookshelf and reread it tonight.
Many people don’t realize that Messick had never completely retired. She had turned over Brenda Starr to other artists and writers but she was still producing a weekly comic strip for her local paper in California.
Cartoonist Trina Robbins, in an interview about 20 years ago, was asked how she reacted to the comment that she “draws like a girl.” Her response (and I’m paraphrasing, of course) was that to her, “Draws like a boy” meant Jack Kirby and “Draws like a girl” meant Dale Messick, so she took it as a compliment.
I liked Brenda Starr in the '70s, when it was probably in a rather strange phase. I felt terrible when Basil and Starr Twinkle were killed and stopped reading. If anybody who kept reading can tell me if they came back, that’d be great.
It was always a terrific, well-drawn strip, even if I was too young to really know what was going on most of the time.
I if I’m not mistaken, Basil and Twinkle did come back in the mid-80s. They didnt die after all. I dont think I’m imagining it but if someone else can confirm it, that’d be great.
I stopped reading the funnies long before Brenda finally married Basil St. John (oh, come on, we all knew he was gay and that “black orchid” story was his polite way of getting away from her!) and had that hideous baby.
Dale Messick made the front page of the NY Times today! Good for the Times—a nice send-off for a Girl Reporter.
OK. You will think me weird. But one time I saved a comics page from the seventies because all the strips that day were coincidentally STUPID.
One was the Phantom. Two reporters are being manacled to walls, as prison guards with shit-eating grins hand them papers to sign on a clipboard. The guard says “Sign this paper admitting you lied about us, and we’ll release you. Otherwise, we’ll have to convince you…” The evil dictator is watching this on his TV, smoking a cigar, and says to himself, “I hope they refuse.”
Another one was a Dick Tracy strip. A cigarette-smoking James Dean-type punk steals a car so he can drive to the governor’s mansion. The security guard there stops him and says, “You can’t park here, fellow.” The punk replies, “But I’ve got a date with the governor!”
And then there was Brenda Starr. Her rival, can’t remember her name, is gloating over the fact that she got Brenda reassigned to the remotest part of the Amazon Jungle and that nobody will ever see her again. The copy boy in the background has got a grimace on his face and you see little GRRRR GRRRR words emanating from him. The next panel, the rival then leans back in Brenda’s chair and props up her feet, and the dyke yells GET YOUR FEET OFF BRENDA’S DESK OR I’LL DO IT FOR YOU!
Yes, I can remember all that, but I can’t remember today’s date. I am pa-the-tic.