Tag: Ernie Bushmiller

It’s Anything Can Nancy Day

[Modified just a slurp, original strip found here. More Nancy related items in the archive.]

Stuff I Do When I’m Bored

The .Gif Friday Post No. 846 – Nancy & Sluggo

Ernie Bushmiller‘s ubiquitous comic strip has intrigued me since I was a kid. It was rarely funny, sometimes creepy, and the drawing style was unique and constrained. Bushmiller was more of a draftsman than a comic strip artist, and it’s obvious that he used tracing templates, photography, and in his later years, photocopiers.

One day in the early 1980s, this panel showed up in the Sunday funnies. I was hooked, and I began paying closer attention to the Zen of Nancy.

The .gifs above have been posted here previously, and scraping them into a pile seemed like the proper thing to do. The one in color was an early experiment with Jasc Animation Shop v.3.11, a program I acquired in 2012 (thanks, Possum). Most of the panels were lifted from Nancy strips posted on X/Twitter by @JohnnyCallicutt and re-used with minimal editing.

[For more Nancy, Sluggo & Aunt Fritzi stuff visit The Nancy & Sluggo Archive.]

Ode to NANCY

For some unexplainable reason, I’ve been collecting random Nancy panels for a while, many culled from this fine collection. I have only one paper copy I clipped long ago from the Sunday Funnies because it’s so Zen; the others were all found online by accident. I messed with one or two…

[Click on any image to enlarge. Previously posted Nancy, Sluggo and Aunt Fritzi Ritz stuff here.]

Boob-Le-Dink, Boob-La-Da

Life goes on, brah.
Lala how the life goes on.

[Found here.]

Nancy & Sluggo & Aunt Fritzi

Nancy & Sluggo Creepo

Ernie Bushmiller was one of the most surreal cartoonists of his time, and this is a good example. Nancy’s and Sluggo’s bodiless heads pop up from side-by-side Jack-in-the-Boxes without any indication of who or what flipped open the latches simultaneously or why.

Nancy’s parents never appeared in the comic and their absence was never explained; her only caretaker was her Aunt Fritzi.

Fritzi Ritz was once an elite party girl, a flapper, who predated the Nancy comics by a few years until Bushmiller took over the strip created by Larry Whittington in 1922.  Bushmiller modeled Fritzi after his own fiancée (according to Wiki) and Aunt Fritzi eventually served as Nancy’s benefactor and disciplinarian. We can assume that she recognized Nancy’s psychosis, even though Fritzi was not quaified to raise a child with mental troubles. Although not an ideal model for a young child, Fritzi did the best she could given the circumstances.

Nancy & Fritzi Ritz 2

Nancy & Fritzi Ritz

[Images found here and here. BTW, Sluggo didn’t appear until 1938, and his last name was Smith – fun facts to know and tell. Related Nancy stuff here.]

Nancy & Fritzi Ritz 3

Nancy goes “PUNG-G”

Nancy PUNG-G

Nancy made a window disappear and lowered the ceiling.
Awesome.

[Found here, via here. Related posts here.]

Antigravity Nancy

She must have got into Aunt Fritzi’s meds again.

Because I’m a Bushmiller Fan, we’ve created a New Category in our archives. All Nancy All The Time.

Sluggo & Nancy

I don’t know why, but those two panels just cracked me up. Ernie Bushmiller was a genius.

[Found here.]