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Dale Messick as a senior at Hobart High School, 1926
You wouldn't guess from her thousand-watt smile that Dalia Messick found high school "boring" — or so she told an interviewer 75 years later, when she was Dale Messick, the legendary creator of Brenda Starr, Reporter. But throughout her high-school career and for at least a year afterward, she contributed numerous cartoons and illustrations to Hobart High School's yearbook, the Aurora. And looking at her charming Aurora artwork today, I get the impression that she was having fun with that, at least.
Dalia, Dale and Brenda
Dalia was born in South Bend, Indiana, on April 11, 1906, to parents who both had a creative streak. Her mother was a milliner or seamstress, her father a sign painter. At a very young age she showed artistic talent, and her father encouraged her to develop it. The family later moved to Hobart.
By the seventh grade, Dalia was entertaining her Hobart classmates with story-strips that she wrote and illustrated. Then came high school and the Aurora. Dalia graduated in 1926, but the 1927 yearbook is full of her artwork.
After high school, she studied commercial art in Chicago, at the Art Institute and Rays Commercial Art School. She would go on to work for various engraving companies, in Chicago, Cleveland and New York, primarily in the design and illustration of greeting cards.
That was her day job and the way she supported her parents and siblings during the Depression; at night she worked on her comic strips. Meanwhile, she managed to get some single-panel comics printed in various Eastern newspapers.
Her first attempt at a commercial comic strip was a failure. Called Steamline Babies, it featured two young women seeking fame and fortune in New York. Dalia was devastated when the McNaught Syndicate rejected it. She picked herself up and went back to the drawing board.
Her big break came with Brenda Starr, Reporter, but that break almost didn't happen. The Washington Post tells the story like this:
Ms. Messick had to fight her way into funny papers at the beginning, when editors would rather take her to lunch than take her work seriously. Mollie Slott, then secretary to the head of the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate, recovered Ms. Messick's strip from an office trash can and persuaded Ms. Messick to change Brenda's occupation from bandit to reporter. She also suggested Ms. Messick change her given name from Dalia to Dale to get around the blatant sexism of the time.Brenda Starr debuted in newspapers in June 1940. Within a couple of weeks, the local papers had been alerted to the fact that Dalia and Dale were one and the same. The Hammond Times urged readers to send letters to the Tribune supporting the local girl's comic strip.
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The debut of Brenda Starr, Reporter (from Dougsploitation).
Letters or not, the strip caught on with the reading public in a big way. At the peak of its popularity, Brenda Starr appeared in 250 newspapers. It has continued to run since 1940; after Messick's retirement, the strip has been written and illustrated by other women.
Dale Messick died April 5, 2005, at the age of 98.
She had not been the first female comic-strip artist/writer, but Brenda Starr was groundbreaking. It featured a smart, independent career woman who actively sought equal treatment with her male colleagues. Its combination of adventure, fashion and romance gave the strip wide appeal and brought this modern heroine into homes all across the country.
The Aurora Artwork
As a freshman at Hobart High School, Dalia created an illustration for each section of the 1923 yearbook — "Faculty," "Seniors," "Music," "Sports," and so on. The drawings were a bit rough, as might be expected in an amateur artist of sixteen, but she showed promising skill and imagination:
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For some reason she did not contribute to the 1924 yearbook. In 1925 she was back, however, and two years' practice had honed her skills. In this cartoon illustration, she gently poked fun at the peculiarities of various faculty members:
In her senior year, Dalia again contributed section illustrations, by now considerably more polished and complex than the earlier drawings:
She also created "Minute Novels," as she called them — story strips capturing the hijinks of, for example, the typical sophomore:
In 1927, although no longer a student, Dalia illustrated the yearbook. The entire book was printed on a background of her art. Her section illustrations had by now reached a level of sophistication miles beyond her debut:
There were no "Minute Novels" this year, only tiny cartoons throughout the "Timekeeper" section (a daily chronicle of the school year). Here, her commentary characters disagree on the yearbook's quality:
And here she gives us a glimpse of herself at work:
If any of the artwork in the 1928 yearbook is hers, it is unsigned and so polished that her personal style is no longer recognizable.
All of the yearbooks excerpted here can be examined more fully at the Hobart Historical Society Museum (706 E 4th St., Hobart, IN 46342, (219) 942-0970; open Saturdays from 10 a.m. to noon).
Sources:
♦ "Artist Is Hobart Product." Hammond Times (Hammond, Ind.) 15 Jul. 1940.
♦ "Hobart Girl Writing Comic Strip in Chicago Newspaper." Hobart Gazette (Hobart, Ind.) 11 Jul. 1940.
♦ Leger, Jackie. "Dale Messick: A Comic Strip Life." Animation World Magazine, July 2000 (http://www.awn.com/mag/issue5.04/5.04pages/legermessick.php3).
♦ Prinzivalli, Doug. "Brenda Starr, Reporter." Dougsploitation. http://dougsploitation.blogspot.com/2009/04/brenda-starr-reporter.html (accessed 5 Feb. 2010).
♦ Sullivan, Patricia. "Cartoonist Dale Messick Dies; Creator of 'Brenda Starr' Strip. Washington Post 8 Apr. 2005 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35837-2005Apr7.html).
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