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Nancy and Sluggo's Guide to Life

Nancy and Sluggo's Guide to Life

Comics about Money, Food, and Other Essentials

by Ernie Bushmiller, foreword by Denis Kitchen

$24.95
$24.95
American Literature Comics & Graphic Novels
Format
The newspaper cartoonist Ernie Bushmiller once admitted that “all my characters are conceived in desperation.” Nancy was no exception. She was the niece of the star of his other strip, Fritzi Ritzi, and meant to serve as a throwaway gag character. But Nancy could not be contained: Within a few years, Bushmiller’s strip had been renamed for her, and she had begun her ascent into the pantheon of cartooning greats.

Nancy, along with on-and-off boyfriend Sluggo, delivered absurd laughs to readers for decades, all rendered in Bushmiller’s distinctive line that cartoonist Denis Kitchen once called “geometric perfection.” A masterpiece of humor and cartooning, Nancy earned both scorn and acclaim for decades, serving as a muse (and sometimes punching bag) for the likes of Andy Warhol, Joe Brainard, Gary Panter, Matt Groening, and more.

This collection of Bushmiller’s Nancy brings together a selection from the beloved Kitchen Sink Press editions of Nancy strips, including How Sluggo Survives! and Nancy Eats Food, as well as a number of newly selected cartoons.

Together, this wide-ranging collection offers a chance for readers to experience the full range of Bushmiller’s absurd humor and unexpected visual delights. As Nancy once said: “Anything can happen in a comic strip!”

Additional Book Information

Series: New York Review Comics
ISBN: 9781681378367
Pages: 148
Publication Date:

Praise

Universalizing historians have given the newspaper comic strip a distinguished pedigree as the twentieth-century descendant of sacred Egyptian hieroglyphics. True or not, no classic strip was better suited to embellish the inner sanctum of Pharaoh Tut’s tomb than Ernie Bushmiller’s long-running tot saga Nancy...If Bushmiller was the comic-strip artist’s comic-strip artist, Nancy was a trademark to rival Coca-Cola’s logo.
—J. Hoberman, Artforum

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