Pioneer female comic artist DALE MESSICK has died

Father geek here with the sad news that Dale Messick, whose long-running newspaper comic “Brenda Starr” paved the way for her entry into the male dominated world of comic art, has died at the age of 98. Her strip ran in 250 newspapers at its height in the 1950s.

Born in South Bend on April 11, 1906 Messick worked on her artistic storytelling abilities while still young, scribbling adventurious drawings all over her schoolbooks and trying out tall-taled yarns on her friends. She studied art and like many famous comic artists got a job at a greeting card company, only to quit in the middle of the Great Depression, beginning to work on her cartoons at night. She took the name of her lead character from a late 1930's socialite, and borrowed Brenda's knockout figure and long red hair from popular film star Rita Hayworth. By 1940 she had broken into the "Boy's Club" and was being published.

Flaming haired Brenda plunged from one hot adventure into another, holding her own against her tough as nails editor and many times filing her stories with the only person left in the newsroom, the cleaning woman, and as World War II took over the frontpage headlines Brenda parachuted into action with every one of her fiery red hairs in perfect order. Young women read Brenda and dreamed of high adventure in exoitic lands. Teenaged boys liked the strip also, and many, thinking they were dealing with a male artist, asked Dale for personal sketches of Brenda in sexier poses than the newspaper would, or could print.

Dale received the National Cartoonist Society’s Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997 and she wrote a single-panel newspaper strip “Granny Glamour” until the age of 92.

An inspiration to generations of young girls who would follow her into cartooning Dale's never-say-die spirit will be missed by comic fans around the globe.