I remember Nancy (and Sluggo) from wa-a-a-a-ay back when I was a kid.
Exactly.
Nancy is my favorite all-time comic strip. It’s not because Nancy is always laugh-out funny (though sometimes it is), not because it is insightful, and not because it has any amusing social commentary. Nancy existed in a bizarre world of Bushmiller’s imagination. It is not really even meant to be read with any kind of logic. Nancy is Zen. Comic 3-panel construction Zen. Bushmiller Zen. The comic strip is meant to be experienced as a moment in and of itself. Unlike, say, The Family Circus, Nancy is not constructed to show how cute or silly kids can be. While the characters in Nancy are children, the strip is not about any real youngsters. It’s about Nancy, Sluggo and their movement into that final frame-- an effortless slide into a sight gag or punchline. The strip is wonderfully pure.
I don’t know which collection of reprints you have, but whether it is the Brian Walker Book with it’s brilliant Newgarden Essay How to Read Nancy, or the Kitchen Sink series of reprints, or the new Fantagraphics three-year dailies, or even any of the very rare other reprints, the rewards from delving into Bushmiller’s mind are great indeed.
N***y was in her heyday popular enough to warrant a few animated episodes.
I vaguely recognized the character, not by name, just as the “girl with the mustache.” But now that it’s been described, it made me wonder this, as well:
There are many comic strips that seem to continue running not because they’re particularly clever or amusing. I think they just collect some kind of sentimental attachment with the readership after so many years, so they don’t have to funny anymore.
Okay. I’m willing to be convinced. Can you provide link that will back up this claim?
Here’s a link to the Newgarden Essay How to Read Nancy. It’s now being expanded into a book that is due out soon. Here’s a Wiki summation of that essay
I don’t know if I can convince you of the greatness of Nancy. But I’ll try.
Many years ago I used to think Nancy was dumb and not worth reading. But a friend of mine in college changed my mind. I couldn’t understand why he would keep copies of that strip. It was stupid, right?
But in reading his scrapbook of saved strips I couldn’t help but appreciate the look of Nancy, the unpredictability of Nancy, indeed the absolute weirdness of Nancy. I found myself laughing. Sometimes the end of the strip would leave me gaping. Not laughing, but wondering how did Bushmiller’s idea lead to here? I would look at my friend and he would just smile and nod. I was starting to really see the strip. And I found myself wanting to read more.
Nancy is not like Peanuts or Blondie, which have a “sentimental attachment.” Indeed I have never met anyone who felt a sentimental attachment to Nancy. Yet it survived. Why? Every day, a gag. Some were awful. Many were funny. Still more were…WTF? But Nancy was there and people read it. Every day, a gag.
The construction of a Nancy strip is so perfect it often goes unnoticed. The Hamster King is right. They are “minimalist masterpieces.” Everything has its place, its balance in the strip. I know of no other cartoonist who achieved this perfection day after day, year after year.
I used to play a game in the break room years ago with a couple of fellow co-workers. One person would pick up the paper and read the comic strips out loud, describing the scene and reading the panels. The game would be to predict the contents of the last frame after reading the first two (or three, whatever the case) panels. Invariably the final frame was quickly guessed. You could see the joke coming. In most comics the joke is already there before the last panel.
But try this with Bushmiller’s Nancy. You know a gag is due, but the last frame is usually just about impossible to predict. That’s another reason I enjoy Nancy so much. That last frame completes an effortless joke…and yet it is so often unexpected…“out of left field.” The gag is not mean, not ironic, and generally not “clever” in the conventional sense. What the gag DOES do is complete the strip perfectly. That’s hard to accomplish.
Other strips have continuity. Nancy does not. If the gag calls for Sluggo to live in a tall falling-apart building, he does. A squat home? No problem. If Nancy needs a pet cat for the gag, she has one. If there needs to be a cow or pig in the strip, there is one. How they got to be there is unimportant. They exist for the moment of the gag, and are gone in tomorrow’s strip, never to return.
Approach Nancy with an open mind. Allow the strips to flow in.
It’s not just a comic strip. It’s a koan.
I actually own a Nancy and Sluggo necktie so yes, know that image well.
Is the tie from Kitchen Sink? I have always regretted not getting one when they had those ties for sale years ago.
Nancy was a gag a day for decades. This character was her contemporary, but his creator gave himself an even bigger challenge than just thinking up a gag for every day.
Can anyone name the character and what the challenge was- without searching?
I know the name is “Henry,” but the challenge, for me, was finding ANY humor in the strip. (Plus, he had no mouth.)
Henry – no idea about the challenge. Can’t wait to learn it.
Nancy is definitely running here in the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
Yeah, it’s Henry. The character was mute, and and only communicated through pantomime. That was the challenge for the cartoonist (Carl Anderson), or it would be if I was doing the strip 
Very cool! I decided not to go looking for that. I did, however, look up the old Hambone single-frame daily “strip” (what do you call a one-frame comic thingy?) that ran in papers in Alabama (at least) when I was young. It’s one of those that got scrapped for being racist when the PC crowd started bitching. But the old guy was an Uncle Remus type who offered homespun wit.
I wonder if there would be any value in a separate spin-off thread that identified old strips and gave an idea of when they ran and when they died.
I’d contribute. I love me some vintage comic strips
I nominate you to start that thread, then! 
I don’t remember where I got it, except that it was online. It’s white with
blue and black images of the pair, if I remember correctly. It’s was one of those stiff, short ties that’s impossible to get tied right, so I never wear it. Ran across it recently while looking for an good tie for a cocktail party. I did not choose to wear Nancy and Sluggo to the party. As we can see from this thread, few people would have known the characters.
I guess the challenge was to tell a story without a speaking character? It must have been a serious challenge because I rarely found any humor in Henry.
nm.
Nancy is still running, but it is sadly not Bushmiller Nancy.