{"id":578,"date":"2009-10-06T20:53:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-07T01:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/2009\/10\/its-bushmiller-time\/"},"modified":"2009-10-06T20:53:00","modified_gmt":"2009-10-07T01:53:00","slug":"its-bushmiller-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/?p=578","title":{"rendered":"It’s Bushmiller Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a good time to be a Nancy-boy. Fantagraphics is about to launch a comprehensive reprinting of Ernie Bushmiler\u2019s strip, along with Mark Newgarden and Paul Karasik\u2019s How to Read Nancy<\/em>, which promises to be a revelatory look at the language of comics. Coupled with this is Drawn and Quarterly\u2019s great new reprint of the Nancy comic books, done by John Stanley and Dan Gormley. Although slightly different in spirit from the Nancy comic strip \u2013 less formalist and gaggy, with longer stories and more sharply defined characters \u2013 the comic book is a fine read.<\/p>\n

The Cult of Bushmiller, has, of course, long been at the core of art comics. It\u2019s hard to think of a major cartoonist who hasn\u2019t paid homage to Nancy and Sluggo: aside from the aforementioned Newgarden and Karasik, the cult includes Art Spiegelman, Seth, Gary Panter, Ivan Brunetti (Bushmiller\u2019s influence runs like a thread through the first of his Yale anthologies), Jerry Moriarty, Bill Griffith, among many others. Newgarden once sat on Bushmiller’s wheelchair, a veritable cartooning throne.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the original Nancy-boy was the painter and film-critic Manny Farber (1917-2008). Farber penned a smart analysis of comics that appeared in the New Republic<\/em> issue September 4, 1944. That article (along with another sharp Farber piece on comics, and many other valuable essays) is available in a book Kent Worcester and I co-edited, Arguing Comics<\/a><\/em>. Here\u2019s what Farber had to say about Nancy<\/em>:<\/p>\n

It is probable that Nancy<\/em> is the best comic today, principally because it combines a very strong, independent imagination with a simplification of best tradition of comic drawing. Nancy<\/em> is daily concerned with making a pictorial gag either about or on the affairs of a group of bright, unsentimental children who have identical fire-plug shapes, two-foot heights, inch-long names (Sluggo, Winky, Tilly, Nancy) and genial self-powered temperaments. This comic has a remarkable, brave, vital energy that its artist, Ernie Bushmiller, gets partly from seeing landscape in large clear forms and then walking his kids, whom he sees in the same way, with great strength and well being, through them. Bushmiller\u2019s kids have wonderfully integrated personalities combining smart sociability with tough independence. They also have wonderful heads of hair \u2013 Sluggo hasn\u2019t any and calls his a \u201cbaldy bean,\u201d Nancy\u2019s is a round black cap with prickles, Tilly has an upsweep tied around the middle like a shock of wheat. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Incidentally, Farber\u2019s whole engagement with comics and cartooning is worthy of study. He was a very early appreciator of Chuck Jones and close friends with Donald Phelps, whose own essays on comics are very Farber-esque.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a good time to be a Nancy-boy. Fantagraphics is about to launch a comprehensive reprinting of Ernie Bushmiler\u2019s strip, along with Mark Newgarden and Paul Karasik\u2019s How to Read Nancy, which promises to be a revelatory look at the language of comics. Coupled with this is Drawn and Quarterly\u2019s great new reprint of the Nancy comic books, done by John Stanley and Dan Gormley. Although slightly different in spirit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[366,413,839,939],"class_list":["post-578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-phelps","tag-bushmiller","tag-farber","tag-nancy"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}