[Quirky Quokka]

Hi everyone

This fortnight, I’ve chosen three Brenda Starr comics from different eras, across three different publishers. I thought it would be interesting to compare how she is portrayed over time.

Brenda Starr was created by female artist Dale Messick, who drew the strip from 1940 to 1980. Dale continued to write scripts for another couple of years, and it was then continued by other writers and artists, including Ramona Fradon. The strip finally ended in 2011.

I know many of you would be very familiar with Brenda. As an Australian, however, I had never heard of her until I read a book on women in comics a few years ago. Perhaps Panther knows if the strip was ever shown in Australia.


Brenda Starr #6 – Jan 1949 – Superior Publishers

This one includes the first appearance of Brenda’s overweight cousin, Abretha, who became one of the ensemble of secondary characters. It’s interesting (cringeworthy?), to see how ‘fat’ people were portrayed in those days.



https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=40684


Brenda Starr #13 – June 1955 – Charlton

I know some of you aren’t fans of Charlton, but I included this one because it shows how the character had evolved by the mid-50s, and also includes a page at the beginning with a photo and bio about Dale Messick.



https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=26496


Brenda Starr – Oct 1963 – Dell One Shots

This one-shot presents a different kind of Brenda. Is the makeover for better or worse?



https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=37764


I’ll be interested to know what you think of these particular books, but also anything else you know about this iconic character or her creator.

Cheers

Quirky Quokka

[The Australian Panther]

Brenda Starr movie - Brook Shields, Timothy Dalton.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4jzASE--O4

[Quirky Quokka]

Brenda Starr movie - Brook Shields, Timothy Dalton.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4jzASE--O4

Thanks for the link, Panther. I haven't actually seen the movie, but it was released some years after it was made, due to disputes over distribution, and then bombed at the box office. Interesting that in the synopsis of the movie, the Brenda Starr comic strip is drawn by a man, who then inserts himself into the strip when Brenda leaves the strip to run off to the jungle. Makes sense to me  Hopefully, the comic books are more of a hit.

Cheers

QQ

[SuperScrounge]

My favorite comic book artist Mike Grell started off as her assistant in the late '60s and/or early '70s, and by that point she was only drawing the characters' faces and he drew everything else. He's often joked that when he writes his autobiography he'll call it "Doing Brenda's Body". 

Dale's Lambiek entry & her Wikipedia entry.

[Quirky Quokka]

My favorite comic book artist Mike Grell started off as her assistant in the late '60s and/or early '70s, and by that point she was only drawing the characters' faces and he drew everything else. He's often joked that when he writes his autobiography he'll call it "Doing Brenda's Body". 

Dale's Lambiek entry & her Wikipedia entry.

I knew I could count on you for some tasty tidbits, SuperScrounge, and you didn't disappoint. That would be some autobiography! I wasn't familiar with Mike Grell, so I just looked him up. He certainly worked on a variety of books. I wonder how many of his female characters had Brenda's body? 

Cheers

QQ

[crashryan]

Brenda Starr appeared in our local papers when I was a kid. Though I read it from time to time (I'll read almost anything) it held no interest to me. I wanted Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. So when I sat down to read these books I had no preset notions.

I should clarify that. I mean I had no preset notions about the characters and stories. I have carried an impression of Dale Messick's artwork with me all these years. That gave me my first surprise while reading these three comics. In the two strip-reprint books Messick's art doesn't remotely resemble my mental picture. I remember her art being much more exaggerated, like that in the Dell comic. Brenda's overdone eyelashes and weird nose, for example, or all the background stars and accent lines. But then the strips in the first two books are from the late 1940s-early 1950s and my memories date from the early-to-middle 1960s. Messick's style might have changed considerably by then.

#6 (Superior Publications)

Talk about coming in halfway through the second act! The first story desperately needs extra captions to explain references to earlier events. I had to dig up other issues to sort out the Larry-Tom relationship. I never did find an explanation for the Vera de Verve business.

The two remaining stories come straight from Cringe City. Yes, this was a different time, standards change, and all that. Even so, Messick lays the fat jokes on so thick it's painful. At least these stories make more sense than the first one.

Dale Messick's artwork is a step or two above competent though not very exciting. In the first story the characters overact. Pesky the office boy is the worst offender, striking melodramatic poses and pulling goofy faces. That said, I applaud Messick's trying to put some life into her figures rather than just having them stand around like many comic artists did.

The lettering on the Brenda stories is pretty bad. It looks as though the editor dumped the original strip's lettering and had someone re-letter every panel. I found a couple of Brenda Starr originals from this period. They'd been lettered with a Leroy lettering tool. Did the editor think it'd be too difficult to cut and paste the original text? Maybe the original strips were very copy-heavy, and once the panels were cropped to fit the comic book page there wasn't room for all the text. An aggressive trimming of the dialogue might have made so many changes the editor had no choice but to re-letter everything. At any rate the letterer is no great shakes, plus he misspells "your" as "you're."

Wrapping up this issue of lighthearted comedy and romance we have...a blood and thunder western???