How Sluggo Survives

by Ernie Bushmiller

Sluggo and Nancy fans will enjoy the 90 pages of comics plus a couple of pages of commentary that make these comic characters even more endearing.

Genres: Comics, Childrens

96 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1989

About the author

Ernest Paul "Ernie" Bushmiller, Jr. (1905 - 1982) was an American cartoonist, best known for creating the long-running daily comic strip Nancy. Bushmiller's work has been repeatedly addressed by other artists: Andy Warhol made a 1961 painting based on "Nancy"; the artist and poet Joe Brainard made numerous works based on Nancy; and many cartoonists have produced work directly inspired by or commenting on Bushmiller's art, including Art Spiegelman, Bill Griffith, Mark Newgarden and Chris Ware. The American Heritage Dictionary uses a Bushmiller "Nancy" strip to illustrate its entry on "comic strip."

Reviews

[M. J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

How Sluggo survives compiles lots of strips about and around Sluggo, Nancy's lazy and punk-ish boyfriend. Ernie Bushmiller's creativity and elegance in characterization and joke delivery shines through most of the pages, here he seems to have already accomplished a level of mastery of his craft most artists only achieve after decades of experience; his work is admittedly simple, but not simplistic, ironic, but not cynical, and my favorite thing: Bushmiller would not compromise his silly jokes for nothing. Nancy follows no rules, her world is chaos, she and Sluggo thrive on entropy. You can see some of that in this volume, however, despite its size, less than 100 pages, the collection suffers from theme repetition, there are no dates to the strips and the introductory text is mediocre, not really adding much to the reading experience. Since the other collections are forever out of print (I'm looking at you Nancy Is Happy: Complete Dailies, 1943–1945) and this old Kitchen Sink publications are the only ones I managed to find I'm not in position to complain much, but I'd love to read these comic strips in chronological order rather than by themes. It's not a bad collection, I just wanted more material and information. But you know what they say, better some Nancy strips than no Nancy at all.

[Sammy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a mainstay of my childhood; probably informed my comic sensibilities more than it had any right to!