Ernie Bushmiller's "Nancy": C/D?

ROLLO!

Gary Groth: What's your position on Ernie Bushmiller?

Clowes: I'm pro-Bushmiller. I mean, I don't like to get up on my soapbox and pontificate about Bushmiller as much as some of these people because I think that defeats the whole purpose. But to me, Nancy had an amazing atmosphere to it that I found kind of scary and off-putting, and really interesting. So yeah, I love Bushmiller, and this new guy who does Nancy should be shot.

G: For betraying the Bushmiller ethos?

C: Yeah, that's just awful dreck.

sums up the then and now (but not the normalizer) quite well

oh, but yeah, Bushmiller was the coolest.

ihttp://www.gilchriststudios.com/nancy/celeb2/10b.gif

Okay, should I buy this?
http://cgi.ebay.com/COMIC-STRIP-NANCY-DOLL_W0QQitemZ140281671292QQihZ004QQcategoryZ723QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

cuz it's kinda awesome.

That's freaking Little Lulu.

My first thought too, Abbott.
But the "Field Enterprises" mark is the folks what own the Nancy trademark.

Perhaps this less humanized version will strike truer to home.
http://cgi.ebay.com/Old-40s-Comic-Strip-Nancy-Doll-Georgene-Averill_W0QQitemZ280285480083QQihZ018QQcategoryZ36549QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

THERE we go. That is the Nancy I would buy.

srsly when did Nancy ever wear Moccasins?

Maybe it's like a Tijuana-style Lulu ripoff, that first one.

I like the weird hydrocephalic Nancy; my gut tells me it's a licensed piece from the strips nuttier period.
Why is there no reprint set of Nancy material? It's certainly as marketable as Pogo.

Even '20s-'30s strips when it was Fritzi Ritz before Nancy spin-off, she didn't look like that.

Now i really want to buy this just to be sure.
But I can hardly justify it.

I have a great Nancy compendium from eBay ($8) that has commentary from Art Spiegelman & others. v. good!

Yeah, Kitchen Sink did a buncha reprints that I would buy used if I could find them at the Strand. You know the whole Griffith "Three Rocks" philosophy, right?

That whole strip is in there.

potential tattoo for when I just don't care anymore:
http://www.rdrop.com/%7Ehalf/Personal/Hobbies/Comics/Nancy/3Rocks.gif

and is AWESOME and true

haha forks I would get that

next tat I have lined up (hopefully as an xmas gift!) is a tat of the old Comics Code of Authority seal of approval

"Art Spiegelman explains how a drawing of three rocks in a background scene was Ernie's way of showing us there were some rocks in the background. It was always three. Why? Because two rocks wouldn't be 'some rocks.' Two rocks would be a pair of rocks. And four rocks was unacceptable because four rocks would indicate 'some rocks' BUT IT WOULD BE ONE ROCK MORE THAN WAS NECESSARY TO CONVEY THE IDEA OF 'SOME ROCKS.'"

Okay, a girl with a comic code authority seal gets love forever.

I am thinking my inner arm between pit & right elbow.

Those Kitchen Sink compilations are great. I wish I'd picked up more than the two I have -- they were cheaper than dirt for a while in the mid 90s.

Did that publishing company die? They put out Cages, right?

Denis Kitchen got caught in the speculator bubble-bust, sold out to Kevin Eastman...limbo.

I would think the tramp stamp comics code would be the classy way to go.
All that Kitchen Sink stuff seems to have more or less disappeared from used book stores and comic shops in the city.
I think Tundra did Cages?
Kitchen Sink did fold, yes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_Sink_Press
A shame, cause they were simply a decade or so ahead of their time.

The Lil' Abner reprints are the most priceless stuff they did; I'm often tempted to blow a shitload of money and buy up a bunch of em.

I am lucky, they have them at my public library.

I know it's not fashionable to like Al Capp so much these days, but boy he could really tell a bigoted, wingnut story!

Fucking Comics.com keeps interrupting their Lil Abner Classics in the middle of storylines!

I know it's not fashionable to like Al Capp so much these days, but boy he could really tell a bigoted, wingnut story!

maybe in the 60's, but I wouldn't call stuff like the Shmoo and the Bald Iggle the products of a bigoted wingnut.

He could also tell hilarious slapstick nonsense story.

And is obv better (in quality, art & bigotry level) than say Katzenjammer Kids or Bringing Up Father.

Katzenjammer Kids never made me anything other than confused and bored.

Nancy, the voice of sanity in 1970

Coming soon.

I liked the floral hipsters joke

Putting yourself smoking a cigarette in a comic strip for children really is a choice in 2026

Mary Whitehouse over here

seriously though. i assume these are actually getting printed up in the funny pages in Sunday newspapers somewhere right? if there were actually any human editors of these things (weak laugh) i'd have expected them to be outraged, not run the strip etc

The audience for comic strips - i.e. senior citizens - is I think less likely to get outraged over cigarette use than pretty much everyone else, though they are obv outraged at Cash for other reasons.

it’s the #58008 issue of PPPP, isn’t it

interesting

https://bsky.app/profile/cashbrowns.bsky.social/post/3mgas2x6rsc26

holy shit she just retconned the entire history of nancy

maybe. or maybe there's a reason none of Aunt Fritzi's relationships seemed to last

fritzie does look like a character from Love and Rockets

Wondering if the boomers who got angry when Gilchrist left and they couldn't jack it to Fritzi anymore are angry or turned on by this new development. Probably both.

fritzie does look like a character from Love and Rockets

I mean....

https://www.comics.org/character/717/

CommonRuffian
4 hours ago
jaimes' run was good but this is reminding me it was missing a crucial element: the author wanting fritzi ritz carnally

love it

playing the hits and i’m here for it

https://www.gocomics.com/nancy/2026/03/19

i really just think she gets the spirit of bushmiller

https://www.gocomics.com/nancy/2026/03/16

https://64.media.tumblr.com/adc5b2f367d75c8b47b947a3820b113d/tumblr_pcg1wjf8iP1qzfmh5o1_500.jpg

nancy's a gemini

holy shit she just retconned the entire history of nancy

― Tracer Hand

nahhhh i mean it's kinda like velma from scooby doo being gay. everybody had to be straight back in the day so velma was assumed straight, but she was pretty openly based on zelda from dobie gillis, who was a straight character played by, uh, _sheila kuehl_.

i'm enjoying the latest storyline.

the panel where jaimes suddenly appears with the #1 grandpa mug cracked me the f up.

ccash is really starting to do her own thing with this. i'm into it!

it really is something. is there one in particular you're thinking about?

agree! it's so interestingly strange. it feels like it's hard to do unself-conscious "strange" humour now, after decades of adult swim and shitposting. but this works somehow - it feels good to not really undestand (or care) how it works

also this is pretty good gag!
https://www.gocomics.com/nancy/2026/04/17

and this is weird and i don't understand it, but also good!
https://www.gocomics.com/nancy/2026/04/11

It's Sluggo Saturday Chuck, what don't you understand.

it is her own thing but i feel it also leans in hard to the dream-like visual gags of the bushmiller days. like this one could straight-up be bushmiller. is there a joke here? kinda, but it's also like you're dreaming

https://www.gocomics.com/nancy/2026/04/14

I like the one from yesterday a lot, this particular joke/observation has been done many times but the final wordless panel makes you go, "huh"

https://www.gocomics.com/nancy/2026/04/19

but yes I'm very glad the strip is in good hands - Bushmiller's sense of humor really did hold up well, can't think of an old comic strip that fits so well into modern meme culture than Nancy. it's great they've got someone willing to take chances and write the sort of jokes where you have to work out the punchline a bit.

I like the new stuff but I wish their lettering style was a bit more airtight, 'cuz the rest of the vibe works.

ha almost mentioned this one here today - I remember reading this joke in a Dave Berg strip in Mad decades ago!

oh thank god they corrected the misspelling of "experience"

xps yes i LOVE the sluggo sunday strip! there was also the one about nancy drawing herself as a famous artist. it's a simple joke on one level but expansive on another. i'll cop to not having read very much of the bushmiller strip but it seems to me like she's fleshing out the characters a little more. not necessarily in a realistic way but in a vibes way? idk.

i have noticed that the lettering style calls attention to itself somewhat. i found it easy to get used to but i do wonder about it.

it's very 90s to me, in how it's kind of shaggy and messy and personal. it was odd at first to see that in a nancy strip but i like it now. it's like fractures of the present busting into nancy's timeless mid-century milieu

If it was a wordy comic the lettering would be intolerable. Alan Moore’s Nancy would need cleaner lettering. As it is, it’s charming and funky. Maybe a touch of Lynda Barry’s looseness in there.

I never really knew anything about this comic but I've been really digging it in its C Cash incarnation since the revive and I thank you all for that

If you ever feel like digging back the Bushmiller stuff is amongst the most elegant, genius humour that you're ever likely to find in the medium.

The Gilchrist era is hilarious for...different reasons. Nancy meets the Moody Blues!

Gilchrist had this love of classic rock and Americana which was very genuine and almost charming sometimes, he was also a remarkably shitty cartoonist who made Fritzi incredibly busty and had her boyfriend wear Bob Seger shirts and constantly confess his insecurities, no wonder she's gay now

in my heart, it's still canon that Nancy has at least 8 posters of Travis Tritt in her bedroom

The more I learn about this wild dirtbag Nancy era the more I'm perversely impressed?

we need a nancy x lil bubby child crossover

Woah, Gilchrist Nancy was bonkers

https://i.ibb.co/wZqbHWnp/Screenshot-2026-04-21-at-22-07-51.png

I mean, unless you think "got fired from his sinecure on a legacy strip after sexually assaulting and (separately) beating up his assistant, before firing her over Facebook, and then posting pictures of them together on the 'gram captioned with long incoherent rants about how she's going to be federally indicted based on information he has given to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, and how he'd sacrificed so much to make her into a great artist, and thought of her as a daughter" is outweighed by him also including prayer emoji hands and explaining that he does whatever God tells him every morning

extremely cool aspect of the current media landscape that no reporting on this can still be found but the Moody Blues link itt is still active

...but cannot be seen in several countries.

cash should do a nancy strip about how this planit is fucked up and god is a crul ringmaster.

Sluggo has a new friend, I think this strip may be targeting me specifically

https://www.imagehost.at/image/ncq1U

important cultural update: https://www.gocomics.com/nancy/2026/05/17

surely sluggo should be listening on a beat up old radio

sluggo is a gay hobo i knew it

lmfao

i can relate https://www.gocomics.com/nancy/2026/05/22