The Best of Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy by Ernie Bushmiller

Nothing has any intrinsic meaning beyond the punchline. Life, school, family, romance, money, health, art, food, crime whatever the subject of a strip might initially appear to be, the only thing that actually counts are the jokes they can generate.

Nancy and Sluggo are typically hyper-expressive cartoon children who act on their impulses and emotions freely, but only in relation to the task at hand, which is usually about solving a problem in an ingenious way that will also be funny for us to observe. There are absolutely no appeals to readers’ finer feelings, no tweaking of heartstrings, no soft-soaping. There is a very different aesthetic at work in Nancy. Cartoon characters emoting about the things we care about too, at regular intervals, is supposed to humanise them and make us identify with them, and a little speechifying or some philosophical debate about spiritual matters is part of the routine. But mainly it’s about ingratiating characters with readers, which means proving they feel the same way we do. Of course this is partly because maintaining a daily strip takes immense amounts of material, and public holidays and religious celebrations are a free source of subject matter. Elsewhere, no matter how wacky or abrasive daily newspaper characters are, you can guarantee they will at some point–especially on Easter, the 4th of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas–tell their friends how very much they love them, salute the flag, and shed tears or prayers while musing on what makes America great and how fortunate its citizens are.

Nancy stands apart from every other classic American newspaper strip in one significant detail: there is no sentimentality in Ernie Bushmiller’s world.

The Best of Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy by Ernie Bushmiller