Whitman Mystery Stories - Brenda Starr, Girl Reporter

This is one of the Whitman Authorized Editions that I have been wanting for quite a while.  While I never had the opportunity to read the original comic strip in the newspaper, I do have an edition of the collected dailies and Sunday strips from 1940 - 46 (Brenda Starr Newspaper Strips), as well as the one-issue Dell Comic published back in 1963 (Brenda Starr Comic Book), plus the collected editions of her original comic book series from Four Star Publications and Superior Publishing back in 1947 - 49.  The ones I still don't have are the Charlton Comics series published in 1955.  I have enjoyed reading her adventures, which are outlandish to say the least - this amazingly gorgeous, redheaded reporter that every man loves on sight manages to get in the most unbelievable situations - yet, with her looks and ingenuity, she manages to get herself and those around her out of every scrape and, along the way, scoops the story for her newspaper, the Flash.  So, I was overjoyed when a close friend of mine sent me this book (along with a Sunday color newspaper page featuring Brenda Starr paper doll with outfits!), and I could not wait to sit down and read it.

 

Brenda Starr, Girl Reporter gives credit to the main character's creator, Dale Messick, as the author of the story, as well as the artist for all of the internal illustrations and full color cover.  I think this is only the second Whitman based on a comic strip that I have read, which is actually written and drawn by the creator of the strip (although, there is some question as to whether Messick actually penned the novel or just the plot - more on that later) - the first was a book based on the Boots and Her Buddies comic strip (Boots - Whitman Mystery), the authorship for which was credited to the strip's creator. What I found interesting is that the title page says "An original story based on the Famous Newspaper Strip 'BRENDA STARR'." Thus, I was expecting a brand new story featuring Brenda and her supporting cast. Little did I realize that was not going to be the case.

 

The story begins innocently enough, with Brenda being sent off to the slopes of Colorado (which is funny, since the most recent Zebra Mystery Puzzler that I read was also set on the slopes of Colorado - Murder by the Book) on a mysterious assignment.  She does not know exactly what the story is or what the work will entail - all her editor told her was to go to the newspaper there and ask for Larry Nickels.  When she arrives, she finds the "newspaper" feels more like a posh hotel, and the "employees" seem to do nothing but lounge around and ski all day!  When she asks for Mr. Nickels, she finds he is out on the slopes, and his secretary - Flurry Snow (p. 19 - and, yes, that really is her name!) - informs Brenda that she is to meet him out on the slopes.  Brenda is somewhat nervous, as she is a horrible skier and that fact is proven when she goes out to meet him, but ends up falling backwards down the slope (p. 24).  He rescues her, much to her dismay, and she learns that the "Cloud" (the name of his newspaper) is nothing more than a hobby, and he asked her out there to breathe some real life into his newspaper.  That story turns up pretty quickly, when Nickels points out to her a nearby lodge, described as "a vast, sprawling building with many towers and gables.  Despite its many windows and entrances, it possessed a look of strangeness and complete isolation" (p. 45).  Nickels tells her the lodge is a mystery, because people go in, but not a single soul has ever come out!  Brenda senses a big story, which is only confirmed when Nickels tells her about the man who operates the lodge: "a queer old duck who calls himself 'Professor Squell'" (p. 46).

 

Now, it is at this point, I started to sense something strange as well.  Not about Professor Squell or his lodge, but about the plot itself.  It felt extremely familiar.  So, I pulled out that collection of newspaper strips I had read before, and sure enough, there it was!  The same exact story I was now reading in prose form I had read three-and-a-half years ago when I read those newspaper strips!  Before Brenda Starr had even been published in the newspapers for a year, she was on a plane, dreaming about the blond-haired mystery man who had kissed her on New Year's Eve - exactly as she did on the opening pages of the first chapter of this book.  In fact, the dialogue was lifted straight out of the newspaper strip and used word-for-word in the book.  Now, obviously, a lot of exposition and additional dialogue was added into the book in order to flesh out the story, the characters, and the page count (otherwise, it would have ended up being a very short book, indeed!).  But if you read the book, side-by-side with the newspaper strip panels, you will see that it is literally a full adaptation of the story written and published back in 1941 and not an original tale at all.  Therefore, I'm at a loss to explain why the publisher refers to this as an "original" story based on the comic strip, when it is in actuality an "adaptation" of a story from the comic strip.

 

The story follows Brenda as she watches first Flurry, and then Nickels, go into the strange lodge and never come out.  A reward offered sends quite a few of the men from the village into the house, none of whom ever come out, and before you know it, Brenda is in hot water, being blamed for sending the men to their doom.  So, what else can she do, but go into the lodge?  Meanwhile, reporter Tom Taylor and photographer Pesky head out to rescue Brenda - and thanks to an anonymous warning, Tom knows enough to wear a gas mask before he goes into house, which saves him from the gas that takes control of all who enter - but does NOT save him from the mysterious man who knocks him out from behind.  From here, the story gets even more wild, including a basement laboratory, underground caverns, a room of pirate booty, and an impromptu wedding between Brenda and the "queer" professor who is holding everyone captive under ground.  And while the collection of newspaper strips ends with Brenda, Tom, and Nickels getting out and rescuing everyone, the book goes beyond and jumps into the next storyline involving a missing detective, a mysterious doppelganger, and a secret surprise.  This story moves much quicker than the first and take up only the last few chapters of the book.  Since I did not get to read the newspaper strips for this tale, it was completely new to me.

 

Now, some have speculated that Messick did not actually write the book, but, rather, it was simply ghostwritten as an adaptation of the strips - and since Messick wrote the newspaper strips, she was given credit for writing the book.  Whether this is actually the case or not, I have no idea.  What I do know is that Messick provided brand new illustrations for the book - 19 of them to be exact.  While some of the scenes do seem to mirror those from the strip, there are differences, which provide proof they were not merely reproduced from the art of the strip.  Messick also provides the art for the endpages, which depict the professor's planned wedding to Brenda, with Tom and Nickels standing behind her and Pesky off to the side, down in the caverns. 

 

What is odd about these endpages is that, in my copy at least, the pages are reversed in the back.  In the front, Pesky and the professor are on the left side, with Tom, Brenda, and Nickels on the right (which appears to be the correct positioning, based on the smoke drifting overhead); however, in the back of the book, Tom, Brenda, and Nickels are on the left side, while Pesky and the professor are on the right - supposedly looking at each other, but because of the repositioning of the pages, they are looking away from each other!  I wonder if this production malfunction was only in this one printing, or if all copies of this book have this error.

 

Despite the story not being original, I still enjoyed it - Brenda is a fun character to read, and her antics are always guaranteed to bring a smile, if not a full laugh, to the reader's face.  The gorgeous Messick art is only an added bonus!  Rather a shame they did not adapt more of the stories into book form - would have made a great series.   

 

RATING:  8 hats that resemble flipped over pancakes out of 10 for a fun-filled romp in the snow, under the ground, in an Easter parade, and in the clubs of Washington, D.C. - all in a day's work for Brenda Starr, Girl Reporter! 

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!

Short Lived Comic Series #11 - Brenda Starr, Reporter (Dell Comics)

Brenda Starr is a name that is likely familiar to you. The glamorous reporter had her own comic strip in the newspaper for many years, and she was also featured in several films, both on the big screen and the small screen. And while she had a couple of comic book series, the one I am focusing on for this blog posting is the shortest series of them all, published by Dell Comics back in 1963. Lasting all of one issue, Brenda Starr Reporter (Oct-Dec 1963) was written and drawn by the character's creator, Dale Messick.

It's funny - I used to never be one to read "romance" comics - I never found them appealing at all. As I've gotten older, I have found that my tastes have changed, and I've come to appreciate more than just your standard super hero comics. Sure, I like a big hero vs. villain battle; but, I've also come to really enjoy some well-told stories that center around the lives of everyday people who don't wear spandex, don't have super powers, and don't fight world-challenging battles. And while Brenda Starr may have a certain level of romance in it (the mysterious Basil St. John being her love interest), she is a reporter, and with that comes some rather dangerous and exciting situations.

I have both of Hermes Press's hardcover collections of Brenda Starr's various comic series, but the Dell Comics' only issue of Brenda Starr Reporter is the only actual Brenda Starr individual comic book that I own. And being that it is written and drawn by Brenda's creator, I feel like this is much more of a treasure than the reprint books.

As the cover so aptly totes, in this single issue, Brenda must sole the mystery of "The Poisoned Black Orchid." The story centers around a mysterious black orchid that is delivered to the City Room where Brenda Starr works a a reporter. Brenda collapses after opening the orchid, and soon enough, it is discovered that the orchid is not really black - someone sprayed it black, and its scent is enough to knock a person out!  Of course, the black orchid is a very important symbol for Brenda - it seems any time Basil St. John is in town, he sends her a black orchid, a very rare species of the orchid family, with a note of where to meet him. But when Brenda receives another black orchid at her apartment, she immediately takes it to the incinerator, assuming it is another fake. She fails to notice to card that falls to the ground - but someone else definitely notices, and Olga Volga thrills that her plan has worked!

It's part mystery (who sent the poisoned orchid, was the second orchid real or poisoned, and can Brenda discover who the mysterious woman is that was seen in the company of Basil St. John?), and part romance (will Basil think that Brenda has given up on him when she doesn't show for their rendezvous? will Olga Volga win his heart? and what will Brenda do when she discovers the wedding dress meant for her in Basil's empty apartment?), and all fun! Messick's story moves along rather quickly, and her art is somewhat exaggerated, but the facial expressions are so spot-on (just look at Teaser's and Twirl's expressions in the beginning of the story - you'd know what was going on even without any word balloons!).  The hairstyle, though?  Whoooo-boy, those woman has some bouffants, that's for sure! But, I'm guessing that was what was in style back then.

Having read the 12-issue series published prior to this by Superior Comics in the Hermes Press's collected edition, I can easily see there is a strong difference in storytelling and style between Messick's Brenda Starr and the stories told by other creators in the Superior Comics' run. Messick's Brenda is definitely more romance-oriented, and while she is still strong-willed and determined, her story is not so focused on the adventure and action end of things as the previous comic book series was.  Still, this one-hit wonder was a great read, and it's a shame Messick didn't do more.

RATING:  8 little frowzy looking wigs out of 10 for still holding up nearly 60 years after the fact - a female character comic book written and drawn by a female creator - a comic way ahead of its time!