Golden Age female comic strip pioneer Dale Messick contributed one of the most prolific comic strip heroine stories of all time: the Brenda Starr series. 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 recovered Messick’s strip from an office trash can and convinced her boss, Joseph Patterson to take Brenda Starr, Reporter on as a Sunday strip. The comic, which prior to publication featured the trademark redheaded heroine as a bandit instead of a journalist, ran in 250 newspapers at its peak in the 1950s.

Messick is said to have experienced quite a bit of opposition as a woman trying to break into comics during the first half of the 20th century, but her work – once finally published – spoke for itself, earning the fascination and intrigue of male and female readers alike. Brenda’s glamorous look is said to have been patterned after screen star Rita Hayworth, but Messick often referred to her creation as her alter ego, in terms of personality.

In addition to the Brenda Starr comic strip, Messick expanded the franchise by drawing paper cut-out dolls to accompany her Sunday comic. She also pioneered the multicultural paper-doll market, creating an African American paper doll, Lona Night, in 1948.

The US Postal Service gave Brenda Starr a commemorative stamp in 1995. She was the heroine of a movie serial in 1945, a television movie in 1976 and a feature starring Brooke Shields as the lead in 1989.

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.