Brenda Starr To End 70+ Year Run



Brenda Starr, a comics feature with over 70 years as a Sunday offering and 65 years as a daily, will end its run on January 2 when the current team of Mary Schmich and June Brigman will publish their final strip. This is the second major Tribune Media Service legacy strip to close its doors in the last 12 months, as Little Orphan Annie ended her string of tomorrows early last summer. Dale Messick's strip was remarkable in that it was a solid performer but never a humongous hit -- it peaked out at about 250 papers in North America and abroad, but that was in the mid-1950s. It had less than 50 remaining clients.

Messick's strip was well known for its launch after the newspaper page had retrenched itself as a boys club despite the early success of female cartoonists like Nell Brinkley. Famously, the New York Daily News newspaper titan Joseph Medill Patterson had serious doubts about running features from female cartoonists just as a general rule, but accepted Brenda Starr for syndication. Messick's strip was also admirable in that its lead was as strong-willed and competent and forcefully proactive in journalism as her creator was in comics. Although the strip paid attention to fashion and had significant romance elements, there was never any doubt as to who was in charge of Brenda Starr, or around whom her strip rotated. That would be Brenda Starr. Messick retired in 1995, and passed away in 2005.

To give you some idea of the strip's endurance, writer Schmich has been with the feature for a quarter century -- a half-Schulz -- and artist June Brigman, who came on the strip following Messick and I believe maybe one other person, has been drawing the strip for 15 years -- the standard contracted life of a modern strip. Additional kudos to those creators for their long run in the difficult role of caretakers.

The Tribune piece notes that Hermes Press will start releasing collections of the strip in June 2011.
 
posted 11:30 am PST | Permalink
 

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