Intrepid Comics Reporter 'Brenda Starr' Faces Final Deadline

Dec. 9, 2010— -- Stop the presses! Brenda Starr, the fictional, globetrotting reporter who has headlined her own comic strip for more than 70 years, is facing her final deadline.

The syndication company Tribune Media Services announced today that "Brenda Starr, Reporter" will appear in newspapers for the last time on Jan. 2, a victim of its writer and illustrator wanting to move on, and of the economic forces battering newspaper comic strips.

Such an ending once would have been unthinkable for Brenda Starr, who always managed to escape from one tough bind after another.

At the height of her popularity in the 1950s, the strip appeared in more than 250 newspapers around the world. There were two Brenda Starr movies. And in 1976, when Brenda finally married the mysterious character Basil St. John, President Gerald Ford and his wife, Betty, even sent their congratulations.

But it's been a tough year for comic strips in general, and for red-headed, comic strip icons in particular.

Many newspapers have been reducing their comics pages to save money, squeezing some long-running strips and the writers and artists responsible for them. At the same time, hand-drawn strips are having trouble competing for the attention of people reared on xbox and Nintendo.

"Little Orphan Annie" ended an 86-year-run in American newspapers earlier this year. By the end, the number of newspapers carrying the strip had dwindled to 20. And in October, Cathy Guisewite pulled the plug on her strip, "Cathie."

Brenda Starr's demise came after Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich, who has been writing the strip for more than 25 years,

and illustrator June Brigman, who drew Brenda for 15 years, decided they wanted to move on. "There's sadness about stopping, but no regret and ambivalence," Schmich told The Tribune. "It came to me really clearly that I was done… I don't think the character is dead. But the comic strip in this form is."

The director of marketing for Tribune Media Services, Jan Guszynski, acknowledged that economics played a role in the company's decision not to find a new team to continue writing and drawing the strip.