On this day, April 5, 2005, illustrator Dalia (aka, Dale) Messick died in Sonoma County, California. Messick studied briefly at the Ray Commercial Art School in Chicago and began working for a Chicago greeting card company. Messick worked on and/or created a variety of comic strips. In 1940 she created her most famous comic strip and character, Brenda Starr. She stopped drawing the strip in 1980 and the final strip of Brenda Starr was published at the beginning of 2011.