Dale Messick
| Dale Messick | |
|---|---|
Messick, shown working on Brenda Starr in 1953.
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| Born | Dalia Messick April 11, 1906 South Bend, Indiana |
| Died | April 5, 2005 (aged 98) Sonoma County, California |
| Nationality | American |
| Area(s) | Cartoonist, Writer, Artist |
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Notable works
|
Brenda Starr |
| Awards |
National Cartoonists Society's Story Comic Book Award, 1975 Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award, 1997 |
Dalia Messick (April 11, 1906 – April 5, 2005) was an American comic strip artist who used the pseudonym Dale Messick. She was the creator of Brenda Starr, which at its peak during the 1950s ran in 250 newspapers.
She was born in South Bend, Indiana, to a seamstress and commercial artist. She had an interest in writing and drawing since childhood. She attended Hobart High School in Hobart, Indiana and studied briefly at the Ray Commercial Art School in Chicago but left to begin a career as a professional artist.
She began working for a Chicago greeting card company and was successful but quit when her boss lowered her pay during the Great Depression. In 1933, she moved to New York City where she found work with another greeting card company at a higher salary, $50 a week, sending nearly half of it back to her family in Indiana. She recalled, "I had $30 a week to live it up. You could walk down 42nd Street and have bacon and eggs and toast and coffee and hash brown potatoes and orange juice—the works—for 25 cents."
She began assembling a portfolio of comic strip samples. Messick was not the first female comic strip creator; Nell Brinkley, Gladys Parker and Edwina Dumm had all achieved success in the field, but there was still a bias against women. Messick decided to change her first name to Dale so her work would be seen by editors. She created a variety of comic strips (Weegee, Mimi the Mermaid, Peg and Pudy, the Struglettes, Streamline Babies), but none were selected for publication.
Messick created the character of Brenda Starr in 1940, naming it after a debutante from the 1930s and basing her appearance on Rita Hayworth. Messick wanted to produce a strip with a female protagonist; she decided a career as a reporter would allow her character to travel and have adventures, adventures more glamorous than those actually experienced by most reporters. She later commented on this in a 1986 article in the San Francisco Chronicle:
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