This unfinished daily sure looks like it features a young Brandy Carter from
Liberty Meadows. According to Stephen Donnelly of Cool Lines, this is one of about two-dozen dailies produced by Stan Drake, creator of
The Heart of Juliet Jones and Bill Yates, creator of
The Small Society and much else for a strip called
Annie’s L’il Orphans in the late 60’s (I would say 1969 from the hair and outfit, plus Harold Gray died in 1968). Like
Liberty Meadows, it included a realistically-drawn babe dealing with small cartoonish characters, except Annie’s were kids instead of animals. This strip only got as far as having a promo sheet made.
This is one of four dailies that were never fully inked and not included in the promo sheet. These are the only ones where Annie looks like Brandy. In all the rest she looks like Eve Jones (Juliet's sister and a blonde). My guess is that these were the first four done and then the brunette Annie idea was dropped. I say the first four, since it wouldn't make any sense to do a different look after the character was established as depicted in the promo sheet.
Stan Drake did Annie and the other realistic stuff and, except for at least one daily where Annie does not appear, Bill Yates did all the kids. I’m sure one reason this wasn’t picked up was that the styles clashed. In contrast, Frank Cho did both the realistic and cartoonish characters so they looked like they belonged together. This looked like the characters were from different universes.
Is there any chance that Annie influenced Brandy? No, Frank Cho was born at least two years after this was made and none of this was ever released to the public. In fact, since Brandy/Annie wasn't even in the promo sheet, she seems to have sat in Bill Yates’s drawer until Stephen Donnelly purchased the long after Liberty Meadows ended. I did show it to Frank and he said someone else had emailed it to him, presumably after seeing it on the Cool Lines site. I had been hoping to be the first one to say, “Hey, look at this!”
