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Ernie Bushmiller, Original Creator of 'Nancy'

© Susanna McLeod

The young cartoonist must have been the envy of all young male artists. By the age of 20, Ernie Bushmiller was given the job of drawing the shapely comic strip flapper Fritzi Ritz when its originator moved onto another comic strip. Over time, the talented cartoonist revamped the strip, added new characters and watched as Fritzi Ritz shot up in popularity. But, one of the new characters stole the show from her beautiful Aunt Fritzi. With her distinctive red bow sitting on black pot-scrubber hair, round baby-face and beaming smile, Nancy became the star.

Ernie Bushmiller left high school at 14 years old to work as a copy boy for the New York World newspaper. The ambitious teenager studied art after his workdays at the National Academy of Design, so when Larry Whittington decided in 1925 to leave his three-year-old comic creation Fritzi Ritz, Ernie was recruited to take over. *(1) The unknown artist was chosen because, according to Reuben.org, Ernie "had a knack for drawing beautiful women and sharp backgrounds using a clean, uncluttered style". Until 1960, Ernie held the record as youngest cartoonist with a nationally syndicated cartoon. *(2)

Developing his own highly-recognizable techniques of drawing and humour, Ernie was writing jokes that were popular with all types of readers. He specialized in using visual puns and stereotypes to punctuate the fun. Ernie introduced "Phil Fumble" into the Fritzi Ritz strip, making the character a caricature of himself, complete with his red hair and baby face, but a little taller. (Phil eventually became Fritzi's long-term boyfriend, after a string of short-term romances.)

In 1933, Ernie added Fritzi's small but boisterous niece Nancy to the Fritzi Ritz strip. Nancy became popular immediately. Ernie changed the name of the strip to Nancy in 1938, and added Sluggo Smith to the cast of characters. Fritzi was gradually eased out of the comic strip, appearing in the Sunday sections (when cartoonists had the whole page to themselves) as separate comic strips of Fritzi Ritz and Nancy. Space became limited and Fritzi Ritz disappeared from print.

Distributed under the United Feature Syndicate, Nancy also was reprinted in "Tip Top Comics" and in "Sparkler Comics" as "Nancy and Sluggo". The comic book changed publishers twice, to St. John and Dell, with Dell assigning "Little Lulu" cartoonist John Stanley to the job. He added his own flair to the pages, creating characters and storylines different to those of the strip. The "Nancy and Sluggo" comic book series ended in 1963. *(2) The Nancy comic strip was a hit with readers, reaching an enormous number of fans through several hundred newspapers by the 1940s.

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