THREE ROCKS

An illustrated biography of Ernie Bushmiller (1905-1982), creator of the cult-favorite comic “Nancy.”

This book is a triumph because it not only recounts Bushmiller’s legacy, but communes with his inimitable spirit. Employing meticulous pen-inked crosshatch drawings, Griffith, the creator of “Zippy,” achieves wondrous results with an experimental approach to his source material. He demonstrates Bushmiller’s creative process and inner thoughts, interpolating original “Nancy” illustrations into his own narrative. Characters appear in daydreams, and strips take shape as Bushmiller ruminates on a gag. This collaged technique creates an ineffable sense of posthumous collaboration between Griffith and his subject. Griffith traces Bushmiller’s storied career at the New York World. At age 19, he was asked to take over the comic “Fritzi Ritz” after its creator quit. Nancy, the spiky-haired goofball whose innocent follies captured the nation’s heart, first appeared in “Fritzi,” and she became the star of her own strip in 1938. “Nancy” was eventually syndicated in nearly 900 papers, and Bushmiller drew daily comics until his death. He had idiosyncratic work habits: He would always begin with a goofy final panel (what he called the “snapper”) and work backward to find a path to his punchline, and he had four drawing tables set up in his studio so he could work on pages in tandem. Reading “Nancy” can be similarly dizzying. In a series of asides, Griffith attempts to introduce highbrow elements to the strip’s lowbrow humor and sparse composition. Perhaps Bushmiller’s strips are “calling our attention to the form comics take—panels, balloons, composition.” Yes, it’s all funny, but “the joke is on us if we fail to see what Bushmiller is up to, namely, taking apart the comic strip & putting it back together again!” Griffith quietly invites readers to explore his own biography in the same critical way. This book is not simply a charming history of a plucky cartoonist, but a formal marvel, pushing at the boundaries of its medium.

Firmly raises the bar for comics biographies.