Brenda Starr Reporter - The Collected Dailies and Sundays: 1940-1946

I have grown to be a true fan of Brenda Starr, that beautiful red-headed reporter created, written, and drawn by the super-talented Dale Messick.  Although, admittedly, I never read the original strips (even though the strip ran from the 1940s well into the 2000s, although its creator left the strip some time ago), I discovered the lovely reporter through some reprints of her comic book series by Hermes Press.  Those comics, though, were not written or drawn by Messick.  I later picked up a Dell Comic that was written and drawn by Messick, and my love for the character blossomed!  This was someone I could really enjoy reading about - the story had everything!  Romance! Adventure! Mystery!  It was a soap opera in comic form.  So, when Hermes Press printed a book that collected a number of the Sunday strips, as well as the daily black and white strips of the 1940s, I couldn't pass it up.

Brenda Starr, Reporter (The Collected Dailies and Sundays: 1940-1946) does not collect every strip published during that 6 year period, but it does feature some wonderful stories from those years - from her very first Sunday strip published on June 30, 1940 through the introduction of the daily strip on October 22, 1945, which provides the origin of Brenda's long-time love interest, Basil St. John (and his oh-so-mysterious black orchid - no connection whatsoever to the DC character of the same name!).  As you read through those first six years of strips, you can easily see that Messick's art was developing along the way.  

 

That very first Sunday strip from 1940 has a Brenda who has an oblong face with an unusually high forehead, and with faces on the male characters that are not exactly distinct or refined.  That first strip does, however introduce the main cast - Brenda Starr ... Muggs Walter, the chief ... Tom Taylor, the fellow reporter in love with Brenda ... Pesky Miller, the young newspaper boy.  What is interesting, though, is that in those early years, Messick used only dialogue and no text boxes at all (except at the end to lead into the next strip).  Thus, introduction to character names and background information is all provided through dialogue - as it is in real life, when one walks into a new place with new people, the only way to find out who anyone is by listening to the conversations and being introduced verbally (because let's face it - in real life, we don't have text boxes floating in the air, telling us what is going on and who is who!).  This lack of text boxes actually breathes some "life" into the series, so to speak, so that the not-quite-refined art is easily overlooked for the sake of the story.

And that first story definitely opens with a bang!  Fed up with minor work, Brenda wants a real story, so she confronts her editor, who gives her the impossible task of getting the story of Silky Flowers, a criminal behind bars who won't talk to any reporter. Will she get her story?   Messick does a great job of planting seeds for future stories, because the whole Flowers story is only a set-up.  Soon enough, Brenda is accompanying Tom Taylor to a costume party where Brenda is inadvertently mistaken for a member of a criminal gang and kidnapped!  Escaping from the kidnappers, it seems Brenda gets shot - only to turn up later, having tricked the shooter into shooting a mannequin instead of her.  

 

 

The next story seems more tame, with Brenda having to show the chief's niece, Daphne, the ropes of being a female reporter at a fashion show - but Daphne's jealousy of Brenda leads to Brenda getting fired - just as Silky Flowers (remember him?) breaks out of jail!  Mistaking Daphne for Brenda, his gang kidnaps the chief's niece, which leads to Brenda getting her job back at The Globe.  A chance meeting at a New Year's party takes Brenda into her next story, which takes the strip on a very different turn - a story involving an old lodge owned by a professor where, if anyone goes in, they never come out!  Brenda thinks it is just the kind of story that will make headlines, so she and her new man, Larry Nickels, go in - and don't come out!  It turns out the professor has an underground cavern there in the mountains where he has kidnapped all of the people who have entered the lodge in order to create a whole new society!  Definitely not the kind of story one would expect from Brenda Starr (who, up to this point, had certainly had some danger and adventures, but who also focused much on fashion and keeping all the boys in love with her at bay!).  

The second set of strips in this book, while presenting the Sunday strips, which were printed in color when published, are presented here in black and white - because the original pen and ink artwork of Messick herself was provided to the publisher of this book to be used.  This section of the book presents the story of "The Curious Tale of Mary Elizabeth Beastly," a story that ran from September 1944 through January 1945.  With these strips, you can see that Messick had definitely come a long way with her art style.  Brenda's face had become less oval and more in similarity with the actresses of that time period (such as Lauren Bacall or Vivien Leigh); the backgrounds became more detailed and the supporting cast became more distinct.  There were also, by this point, more supporting character, such as Hank O'Hair, the female city editor.  No denying, Hank had me confused for a while, as I could not figure out if Hank was a man or a woman!  It is interesting that Messick created an androgynous character such as this back in the early 1940s - by today's standards, Hank would likely be defined as a lesbian, no doubt.  In any event, this is another one of those odd tales - it involves a mysterious recluse who is set to inherit her mother' fortune after her mother dies; but when Brenda goes to investigate, she discovers there is much more going on!  Twin sisters, a mad doctor, Brenda getting kidnapped yet again and prepared to be used in a crazy experiment, and a diabolical lair hidden in the heart of the city - it seems Messick was coming up with some very "out there" tales for her beautiful reporter to investigate.

 

The last part of this book presents the start of the daily strips in 1945, and provides the Sunday and dailies from October 1945 through February 1946 that give readers the origin of Basil St. John, who becomes a very important part of Brenda's life through the years thereafter.  Those first daily strips feature a typical Brenda story, with her covering a fashion show where she assumes the role of one of the models (much to the chagrin of the designer whose clothes she is modeling) and discovers the actual model has been murdered.  By the end of that story, Brenda's life is in danger when she is left in a burning building!  But she is rescued by a stranger with an eye patch - who saves her life and then disappears!  Needless to say, as the strip continues, Brenda is eventually reunited with the tall, handsome stranger when she follows up on the clue of a black orchid and is convinced to take the young girl, Crystal, back home with her.  These latter strips integrate considerable more humor into the stories, with the introduction of Abretha Breez, Brenda's cousin who is the opposite of Brenda in every way - lazy, obese, and definitely not beautiful - along with Abretha's dog, Tornado (who does not "speak," but readers of the strip are able to read his thoughts about his owner and the other characters - at one point, he even finds love and takes off on an adventure of his own to try and save Brenda!).

With the introduction of the dailies, I notice that the Sunday strips seem more like recaps of what has been happening, and in the instances where the story does move forward in a Sunday strip, the following strip on Monday pretty much recaps what happened on Sunday.  There were several Sunday strips that were more or less interludes, featuring Abreatha and/or Tornado.  I will admit, though, that one thing I did enjoy about these early strips is that Messick made sure to celebrate the holidays with her characters - Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter - each time the holidays came around, Messick featured one or two strips that found her cast of characters celebrating the holiday in style.  And also, I will say that I think I preferred the color Sunday strips to the black and white dailies, simply because with the color, Messick was able to truly share her clear love of fashion and stayle!

 

Overall, the series reads like a soap opera (which is one of the many reasons I enjoy it!), but it features a very strong, determined female protagonist who, even though she found herself in peril time and time again, she did not need a man to save her - she managed to find her own way out of the danger and ultimately save the day!  It is surprising that this strip was given the chance back in the 1940s, but it clearly resonated with the readers, since it gained enough popularity to expand from a once-a-week Sunday strip to a seven-day-a-week daily strip and to spawn several movies, several comic book adaptions, and numerous other merchandising tie-ins.  Messick was definitely ahead of her time with this strip, and just like my love for Nancy Drew, Wonder Woman, and other strong female leads, Brenda Starr is definitely a five-star read in my book!

 

RATING:  10 hats to end all hats out of 10 for sharing these 80-year old comic strips, giving a whole new generation the opportunity to fall in love with the gorgeous reporter, Brenda Starr!