In Praise of The All-New Nancy
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Author and TCJ comics reviewer Frank M. Young looks at the new Nancy by Caroline Cash, with a hat tip to Ernie Bushmiller‘s original and the Olivia Jaimes‘ reboot, at Prospect Magazine.
Comics characters often outlive their creators. Some have carried on for decades, others more than a century, picked up by new artists and writers who weren’t around when they started. Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy is one of them.
During its original run under Bushmiller from 1938 to 1982, Nancy was one of the most popular daily newspaper comics in the United States, syndicated in over 900 titles at home and abroad … with six cartoonists having taken the helm since Bushmiller’s death.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, it was comics that sold newspapers. Nowadays the newspaper strip is seldom more than a stagnant pond of over-familiar faces, a symptom of stasis: there just to tread water and keep the copyright current for whoever owns it.
Nancy seemed destined to a similar fate, until in 2018 it received its most notable (and thoroughly millennial) takeover by the pseudonymous artist Olivia Jaimes.
While there’s not enough to base a critical thesis upon quite yet, Cash looks like the strongest personality to enter newspaper comics in years. Her Nancy teeters between crowd-pleasing and shocking, a vibrant imbalance that has the reader in a state of constant suspense. Each new strip is a surprise.
Frank M. Young’s full review is here.
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