Original artwork for Nancy comic strip, September 17, 1973

N.p. N.p., 1973. Original three-panel artwork by Ernie Bushmiller for the September 17, 1973 daily strip of his seminal comic strip. White-out to the third panel, and annotations in manuscript ink and pencil to the margins. Provenance stamps on the verso.

In this entry, Nancy's friend makes a call from a pay phone while also making a meta-joke. Featuring a rare appearance of a Saint Bernard.

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 the 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. Near Fine.

[Book #171614]