Brenda Starr has been a daily comic staple for 70 years. No longer.
From a piece in the Boston Herald...
Once appearing in more than 250 newspapers in the United States and abroad at its peak in the 1950s, "Brenda Starr" bows out after 70 ½ years — the last 65 as a seven-day-a-week strip — still running online and in about three dozen newspapers around the world, including the Chicago Tribune, Boston Herald and The Star of Malaysia.
By comparison, when Chicago Tribune parent Tribune Co.’s Tribune Media Services retired the daily "Little Orphan Annie" strip in June after more than 85 years, only about 20 papers were affected. But "Annie" looms large as a cultural touchstone apart from the funny pages, thanks to the old-time radio and musical adaptations of the serial.
Neither the 1989 feature film version of "Brenda Starr" starring Brooke Shields nor the TV movie 13 years earlier with Jill St. John in the title role resonated anywhere near as deeply. Never mind the largely forgotten 1945 serial with Joan Woodbury.
That’s not to say Brenda was without her fans, especially in her day. When she finally married the mysterious, handsome eye-patch-wearing Brazilian inventor Basil St. John after three decades in January 1976, President Gerald Ford and first lady Betty Ford sent congratulations. But like Gloria Swanson’s Norma Desmond in "Sunset Boulevard," the panels and papers got small.
The character may live on in another venue, such as graphic novels, and the first volume of a collection of strips is due from Hermes Press in June. But the famed newspaperwoman’s newspaper days are over.
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