Fallen Starr

(Shout out to Greg for sharing my epitaphany)

Or

Dale’s dead? I didn’t even know she was Messick

Dale Messick, creator of one of the long-lasting, most pointless comic strips to waste valuable broadsheet space has died at the age of 98. Starting in 1940, Brenda Starr, Reporter was the best dressed, sassiest member of the newsroom at The Flash, and both the character and creator broke barriers in the previously all male world of the funnies. During its peak in the 1950s it wasted pulp in 250 newspapers. Brenda was pursued for three decades by Basil St. John, who wore an eyepatch and had a mysterious illness that could only be treated by a serum taken from black orchids in the Amazon jungle, which he often left Brenda to pursue, leaving the red-haired beauty to fend off many suitors. When they married in the 1970s, Gerald Ford sent congratulations. Then fell down. Dale retired from the strip in 1985, and was critical of the direction it took since then. She also derided the multiple film versions, especially the flop with Brooke Shields and Timothy Dalton that sat ignored on a shelf for six years before being released in 1992. In 1997, she received a lifetime achievement award from the National Cartoonist Society, and continued with a single-panel strip called Granny Glamour until she turned 92.