Nancy (comic strip)

Nancy is an American comic strip, originally written and drawn by Ernie Bushmiller and distributed by United Feature Syndicate and Andrews McMeel Syndication. Its origins lie in Fritzi Ritz, a strip Bushmiller inherited from its creator Larry Whittington in 1925. After Fritzi's niece Nancy was introduced in 1933, Fritzi Ritz evolved to focus more and more on Nancy instead of Fritzi. The new strip took the old one's daily slot, while Fritzi Ritz continued as a Sunday comic, with Nancy taking the Sunday slot previously filled by Bushmiller's Phil Fumble strip beginning on October 30, 1938.
The character of Nancy, a precocious eight-year-old, first appeared in the strip Fritzi Ritz, a comic about a professional actress and her family and friends. Larry Whittington began Fritzi Ritz in 1922, and it was taken over by Bushmiller three years later. On January 2, 1933, Bushmiller introduced Fritzi's niece, Nancy. In 1949, he was quoted as saying that he originally intended Nancy "just as an incidental character and I planned to keep her for about a week and then dump her ... But the little dickens was soon stealing the show and Bushmiller, the ingrate, was taking all the bows." Nancy became the focus of the daily strip, which was renamed for her in 1938 after Lawrence W. Hager, the editor of the Owensboro, Kentucky Inquirer-Messenger (now the Messenger-Inquirer), lobbied for the change; Sluggo Smith, Nancy's friend from the "wrong side of the tracks" had been introduced earlier that year, and the strip's popularity rose. Comics historian Don Markstein ascribed the strip's success to Bushmiller's "bold, clear art style, combined with his ability to construct a type of gag that appealed to a very broad audience.
Fritzi Ritz became a secondary character, although her solo strip continued as a Sunday-only strip, where her relationship with Phil Fumble (who'd been featured in his own Sunday topper strip since 1932) was an ongoing presence until his departure in 1968. Fritzi Ritz continued as a Sunday feature (with Nancy as a topper) until that year when it too was replaced with Nancy permanently. At its peak in the 1970s, Nancy ran in more than 880 newspapers, before falling to 79 shortly before Guy Gilchrist's departure from the strip in 2018.
After Bushmiller's death in 1982, the strip was produced by different writers and artists. Mark Lasky briefly handled the daily strip in 1982/1983 until his death from cancer at age 29. Al Plastino worked on Sunday episodes of Nancy from 1982 to 1984 after Bushmiller died. During that period, David Letterman showed on TV a Nancy panel with Plastino's signature and made a joke about Plastino as a superhero name. (Letterman's writers were apparently unaware that Plastino was known for his superheroes.)
The daily strip was handed to Jerry Scott in 1983 and the Sunday in 1985. Scott gradually started to draw the strip in a much different, more modern style than other incarnations. In an interview in 2024, Scott said that he had never been an enthusiast of Nancy and only accepted the job as a way of breaking in to the newspaper strip industry, so after about a year he felt burnt out on imitating Bushmiller's style and wanted to try his own approach. In 1994, the syndicate sought a replacement for Scott; applicants included Ivan Brunetti and Gary Hallgren. In 1995, Guy and Brad Gilchrist were given control of the strip; Guy Gilchrist subsequently became the sole writer and illustrator.
Daily credits, post-Bushmiller:
Sunday credits:
After 22 years, Gilchrist's last Nancy strip came out on February 18, 2018, which involved the marriage between the characters of Fritzi Ritz and Phil Fumble. The strip resumed on April 9 with a "21st-century female perspective" by Olivia Jaimes (a pen name), the strip's first female creator. At the time of the announcement, 75 newspapers still ran the strip. Jaimes said, "Nancy has been my favorite sassy grouch for a long time. I'm excited to be sassy and grouchy through her voice instead of just mine" and "the Nancy I know and love is a total jerk and also gluttonous and also has big feelings and voraciously consumes her world". Comics historian Tom Spurgeon described Jaimes as funny and talented, with an approach to the character that both breaks with and pays homage to Bushmiller's version.
In the process, Jaimes updated the content of the strip, such as Nancy frequently using her smartphone and attending robotics classes. The September 3, 2018, strip spawned an Internet meme, depicting Nancy riding a hoverboard using two phones, one of which was attached to a selfie stick, and proclaiming that "Sluggo is lit." Jaimes described her aim with that strip to "most upset the person who likes me the least ... somebody who's like, 'Nancy sucks now' ... what I imagine my greatest hater would despise most is Nancy interacting with every piece of technology using words you don't understand."
In May 2024 Jaimes announced that she would take 'a temporary break' from Nancy, and that a host of guest artists would take the strip on for limited periods. The first artist to do so was Leigh Luna, starting with a Sunday page on 23 June 2024. The second was Shaenon K. Garrity, starting with a strip on Monday, 8 July 2024. The third was Caroline Cash, starting with a strip on Monday, 22 July 2024. Jaimes resumed working on Nancy on Monday, 2 September 2024.
The artists who followed Bushmiller drew in a range of styles that deviated distinctly from his deceptively simple approach. Despite the changes in art style over the years, however, it is Bushmiller's work that is still most closely identified with the strip.
Bushmiller refined and simplified his drawing style over the years to create a uniquely stylized comic world. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language illustrates its entry on comic strip with a Nancy cartoon. Despite the small size of the reproduction, both the art and the gag are clear, and an eye-tracking survey once determined that Nancy was so conspicuous that it was the first strip most people viewed on a newspaper comics page.
In a 1988 essay, "How to Read Nancy", Mark Newgarden and Paul Karasik offered a probing analysis of Bushmiller's strip:
Comics theorist Scott McCloud described the essence of Nancy:
Cartoonist Wally Wood described Nancy's design more succinctly: "By the time you decided not to read it, you already had."
Bushmiller won the National Cartoonists Society's Humor Comic Strip Award for 1961 and the Society's Reuben Award for Best Cartoonist of the Year in 1976.
In 1995, the strip was selected as one of the 20 in the "Comic Strip Classics" series of commemorative U.S. postage stamps.
There were first several Fritzi Ritz comic stories in comics published by United Feature Syndicate. These include Fritzi Ritz No. 1 (1948), 3–7 (1949), #27–36 (1953–1954); United Comics #8–36 (1950–1953); Tip Topper Comics #1–28 (1949–1954); St John published Fritzi Ritz #37–55 (1955–1957). Dell published Fritzi Ritz #56–59 (1957–1958)
Nancy appeared in comic books—initially in a 1940s comic strip reprint title from United Feature, later St. John Publications and later in a Dell comic written by John Stanley. Titled Nancy and Sluggo, United Feature published #16–23 (1949–1954), St. John published #121–145 (1955–1957). Titled Nancy, until retitled Nancy and Sluggo with issue No. 174, Dell published #146–187 (1957–1962). (Hy Eisman produced some of Dell's Nancy stories in 1960–61. Gold Key published #188–192 (1962–1963). Dell also published Dell Giants devoted to Nancy (#35, No. 45 and "Traveltime"), and a Four Color #1034. Nancy and Sluggo also appeared in stories in Tip Top Comics published by United Feature (#1–188), St. Johns (#189–210), and Dell (#211–225), Sparkler #1–120 (1941–1954) and Sparkle #1–33 (1953–1954) published by United Feature. Fritzi Ritz and Nancy appeared in several Comics on Parade (#32, 35, 38, 41, 44, 47, 50, 53, 55, 57, 60–104) published by United Feature.
Nancy was reprinted in the British comic paper The Topper, between the 1950s and the 1970s. Nancy also had its own monthly comic book magazine of newspaper reprints in Norway (where the strip is known as Trulte) during 1956–1959.
Nancy was featured in two animated shorts by the Terrytoons studio in 1942: Doing Their Bit and School Daze. A third cartoon, Nancy's Little Theatre, was announced with a release date of October 16, 1942, but seems not to have been completed; Motion Picture Herald was the only trade journal to include it in booking listings, and later pulled it. In the cartoons, the character was voiced by Judy Stahr.
In 1971, several newly created Nancy and Sluggo cartoons appeared on the Saturday morning cartoon series Archie's TV Funnies, which starred the Archie Comic Series characters running a television station. Nancy appeared along with seven other comic strip characters: Emmy Lou, Broom-Hilda, Dick Tracy, The Dropouts, Moon Mullins, the Captain and the Kids and Smokey Stover. The series lasted one season. In 1978, she was also featured in several segments of Filmation's animated show Fabulous Funnies, a repackaging of Archie's TV Funnies material minus the Archie characters wraparounds.
Nancy has been translated into a variety of languages, often with changes to characters' names. In Sweden, the strip is called Lisa och Sluggo. In French, Nancy is called Philomène in Canada, and Zoé in France, where the strip is called Arthur et Zoé (Arthur being the French name of Sluggo). Nancy also appeared on the back cover of the popular Arabic children magazine Majid during the 80s, she was known as Moza while Sluggo was portrayed as her brother Rashoud. In Mexico she is known as Periquita, while Sluggo is called Tito. In Brazil, Nancy and Sluggo were called Xuxuquinha and Marciano in the 60s and in the following decade as Tico and Teca (Sluggo and Nancy respectively).
Bushmiller's artwork has inspired other artists:
A spin-off titled Random Acts of Nancy began March 19, 2014, consisting of sampled single panels of Nancy comics drawn by Ernie Bushmiller. Following Guy Gilchrist's departure from Nancy, this strip was discontinued.
On October 1, 2019, Andrew McMeel Publishing released a spin-off board book, Nancy's Genius Plan, written and illustrated by Jaimes. In the book, Nancy's attempts to eat a slice of Fritzi's cornbread are aided by the reader, who is supposed to move the book in accordance with Nancy's commands.