Original artwork for Nancy comic strip, February 12, 1973

N.p. N.p., 1973. Original two-panel artwork by Ernie Bushmiller for the February 12, 1973 daily strip of his seminal comic strip "Nancy." With the artist's original signature in the first frame and his faint annotations in manuscript pencil to the margins.

In this strip, Sluggo tricks Nancy with a fake fish sign.

As with American cinema, it was the French who first championed the studied simplicity of Bushmiller's un-deconstructible combination of rigid artistic style and even more rigidly governed humor. In 2012, Fantagraphics Press took on the long overdue task of putting the complete series into book form.

In our estimation, Daniel Clowes put it best in his introduction to Fantagraphics' first volume of Bushmiller's long run. Clowes astutely points out that "Nancy" seems to come "from some primal Jungian dreamscape, miraculously transmitted into the morning paper." He goes on to say how he imagines Bushmiller at work, "carefully extracting every shred of irony from each frame."

21 x 7 inches. Collector stamp on the verso, else Near Fine.

[Book #167711]