Golden Age female comic strip pioneer Dale Messick, best known for creating
Brenda Starr, Reporter, has passed away. She was 98.

Born in South Bend, Indiana in 1906, Messick’s career began illustrating
for greeting card companies. Her drawings caught the attention of publishing
assistant, Mollie Slott, who convinced her boss, Joseph Patterson to take
Brenda Starr, Reporter on as a Sunday strip. The comic ran in 250
newspapers at its peak in the 1950s.

Brenda’s glamorous look is said to have been patterned after screen star
Rita Hayworth.

Messick received the National Cartoonist Society’s Milton Caniff Lifetime
Achievement Award in 1997. She drew and wrote a single-panel strip “Granny
Glamour” until age 92. Following a stroke in 1998, she was unable to continue
drawing and never fully recovered.

Messick is survived by one daughter, Starr Rohrman.

Read more about her remarkable life here.