★ 2023-05-13
An illustrated biography of Ernie Bushmiller (1905-1982), creator of the cult-favorite comic “Nancy.”
This book is a triumph because it not only recounts Bushmiller’s legacy, but communes with his inimitable spirit. Employing meticulous pen-inked crosshatch drawings, Griffith, the creator of “Zippy,” achieves wondrous results with an experimental approach to his source material. He demonstrates Bushmiller’s creative process and inner thoughts, interpolating original “Nancy” illustrations into his own narrative. Characters appear in daydreams, and strips take shape as Bushmiller ruminates on a gag. This collaged technique creates an ineffable sense of posthumous collaboration between Griffith and his subject. Griffith traces Bushmiller’s storied career at the New York World. At age 19, he was asked to take over the comic “Fritzi Ritz” after its creator quit. Nancy, the spiky-haired goofball whose innocent follies captured the nation’s heart, first appeared in “Fritzi,” and she became the star of her own strip in 1938. “Nancy” was eventually syndicated in nearly 900 papers, and Bushmiller drew daily comics until his death. He had idiosyncratic work habits: He would always begin with a goofy final panel (what he called the “snapper”) and work backward to find a path to his punchline, and he had four drawing tables set up in his studio so he could work on pages in tandem. Reading “Nancy” can be similarly dizzying. In a series of asides, Griffith attempts to introduce highbrow elements to the strip’s lowbrow humor and sparse composition. Perhaps Bushmiller’s strips are “calling our attention to the form comics take—panels, balloons, composition.” Yes, it’s all funny, but “the joke is on us if we fail to see what Bushmiller is up to, namely, taking apart the comic strip & putting it back together again!” Griffith quietly invites readers to explore his own biography in the same critical way. This book is not simply a charming history of a plucky cartoonist, but a formal marvel, pushing at the boundaries of its medium.
Firmly raises the bar for comics biographies.
★ 07/10/2023
One master of comics arts pays tribute to another in this inventive graphic biography of Ernie Bushmiller (1905–1982), creator of the long-running strip Nancy. Griffith (Zippy the Pinhead) and his Zen surrealist nonchalance might seem an odd fit for the ostensibly square Bushmiller. He certainly plays with form, inserting himself into the narrative and rearranging Bushmiller’s artwork—but he’s earnest about Nancy: “the perfect expression of what comics are.” The Bronx-born Bushmiller, as a funnies-obsessed 19-year-old high school dropout copy boy at the New York World, got a lucky break in 1925 when he was offered the gig to take over a cheesecake strip about a flapper named Fritzi. After he gave Fritzi a trouble-prone niece named Nancy in 1933, he found “the little dickens was soon stealing the show.” As Bushmiller advances from success to success with the retitled strip, Griffith resists seeking darkness beneath the contented exterior of an artist who married happily, read voraciously, and lived the suburban life in Connecticut. Contemporaries including actor Harold Lloyd, Krazy Kat’s George Herriman, and Flash Gordon’s Alex Raymond make cameos. Griffith points to the strip’s meta narratives and concise absurdist non-punch-lines (Nancy blows a gum bubble so large a confused Martian sees it) as proof that this little dickens meant more than the space she filled in back pages. It’s a surprisingly satisfying homage to an undersung artist. (Aug.)
I inhaled this book. If there’s one Nancy mystery greater than the peculiar, clean hum of the strip itself, it’s what Ernie Bushmiller, the man, was actually like. In this last, best volume of a three-book talismanic paean to the inspirations that have sustained and formed him for the past half century, underground comix legend Bill Griffith grafts all the real messiness of life—research, anecdotes, and interviews with those who knew Bushmiller—to perfect examples of the distilled graphic haiku of the Connecticut Zen master of the comic strip. The result, quite simply, is a page-turning, standard-setting, must-have work of biographical art. Two words: Three Rocks. Five stars!
As the curator of the fictional Bushmiller Museum in Altadena, California, I was thrilled to learn from reading Three Rocks that there’s a fictional one in Stamford, Connecticut, too!
Bill Griffith is a master of pen-and-ink graphic storytelling. This delightful book is, first and foremost, a well-researched biography of Ernie Bushmiller, creator of Nancy and one of the unsung geniuses of the comics business. It is also a thought-provoking discourse on the inner dynamics of cartooning and its relationship to fine art. The narrative alternates deftly between realistically rendered scenes of Bushmiller’s life and career to flashbacks, future fantasies, dream sequences, clever asides by Nancy herself, and informative insights from the author. It is a thoroughly entertaining journey into Bushmillerland that is destined to take its place among the select group of classic graphic novels.
If you stare deeply enough into the bottomless abyss of black dots that serve as the eyes of Nancy and Sluggo, would you live to tell the tale? Well, Bill Griffith has. And the tale he tells is a complex, peculiar, and funny graphic biography of Ernie Bushmiller, creator of the brilliantly strange (and strangely brilliant) Nancy and Sluggo (as well as Fritzi Ritz and Phil Fumble). As the widest-ranging cartoon chronicler of American absurdity in our time, Bill Griffith has topped himself. This is an instant comic-strip classic!
For many years, I’ve devoured Bill Griffith’s work. It’s always inspiring and engrossing. As it never fails to do, Griffith’s brilliance and consummate drawing chops shine through. Three Rocks is amazing!
If you stare deeply enough into the bottomless abyss of black dots that serve as the eyes of Nancy and Sluggo, would you live to tell the tale? Well, Bill Griffith has. And the tale he tells is a complex, peculiar, and funny graphic biography of Ernie Bushmiller, creator of the brilliantly strange (and strangely brilliant) Nancy and Sluggo (as well as Fritzi Ritz and Phil Fumble). As the widest-ranging cartoon chronicler of American absurdity in our time, Bill Griffith has topped himself. This is an instant comic-strip classic!”—Matt Groening
“For many years, I’ve devoured Bill Griffith’s work. It’s always inspiring and engrossing. As it never fails to do, Griffith’s brilliance and consummate drawing chops shine through. Three Rocks is amazing!”—Emil Ferris
“I inhaled this book. If there’s one Nancy mystery greater than the peculiar, clean hum of the strip itself, it’s what Ernie Bushmiller, the man, was actually like. In this last, best volume of a three-book talismanic paean to the inspirations that have sustained and formed him for the past half century, underground comix legend Bill Griffith grafts all the real messiness of life—research, anecdotes, and interviews with those who knew Bushmiller—to perfect examples of the distilled graphic haiku of the Connecticut Zen master of the comic strip. The result, quite simply, is a page-turning, standard-setting, must-have work of biographical art. Two words: Three Rocks. Five stars!”—Chris Ware
“As the curator of the fictional Bushmiller Museum in Altadena, California, I was thrilled to learn from reading Three Rocks that there’s a fictional one in Stamford, Connecticut, too!”—Tom Gammill
“Bill Griffith is a master of pen-and-ink graphic storytelling. This delightful book is, first and foremost, a well-researched biography of Ernie Bushmiller, creator of Nancy and one of the unsung geniuses of the comics business. It is also a thought-provoking discourse on the inner dynamics of cartooning and its relationship to fine art. The narrative alternates deftly between realistically rendered scenes of Bushmiller’s life and career to flashbacks, future fantasies, dream sequences, clever asides by Nancy herself, and informative insights from the author. It is a thoroughly entertaining journey into Bushmillerland that is destined to take its place among the select group of classic graphic novels.”—Brian Walker