Nancy the comic strip is going through some changes.
You remember Nancy, don’t you? Well, it has been in production all this time.
The Ernie Bushmiller comic, started in 1925, went on until 1982, when he passed away. Mr. Bushmiller wrote and drew the comic. It started out as Fritzi Ritz, who is Nancy’s aunt and then morphed into Nancy when she was introduced in 1933. So yes, it goes way back.
From 1982 to 2018, after Bushmiller’s death, the strip was written and drawn by various people.
Mr. Bushmiller took Fritzi Ritz over from a cartoonist named Larry Whittington, who started it in 1922. I only mention it because it’s been in quite a few hands over the years. For the last seven, it’s been written and drawn by the mysterious Olivia Jaimes, but currently it’s in reruns.
Another change. And therein lies the rub.
I remember reading Nancy when I was a kid. I mostly remember it at my grandmother’s house, so maybe it wasn’t in the newspapers we got at home and was in something she subscribed to.
Since 2018, there was a “new” Nancy. It was the same old Nancy and Sluggo, but in a new way. As I mentioned, cartoonist Olivia Jaimes wrote and drew the strip, now she is retiring from that and Caroline Cash is taking over. New strips will appear in the new year. Currently old Ernie Bushmiller strips are running.
When Olivia first took over, I tried to interview her for my 10 With Tom column, but I received no response. Olivia Jaimes is a pseudonym and she, or is it a he? likes to remain unknown.
I find it quite careless to just take on a well-known strip, make it your own for a few years and just “retire.” But I guess that was the case from 1982 to 2018 when the strip was run by others, sort of passing it around until Olivia took it over in 2018. And now she is passing it on. And who knows, perhaps she needs to leave for personal or health reasons.
I know that if I was given a legacy strip, I would guard it and cherish it like so many other cartoonists do.
I was reading comments on The Daily Cartoonist blog, where I found out about this Nancy change and there are those for it, and those against it.
One commentor feels as I do, saying, “I find it highly insulting that Andrews McMeel just passes this classic comic strip over to others willy nilly. And Olivia had a plum position that people would kill for. She just went through the motions. Didn’t she take off a long period of time last year, having others fill in for her?” He went on to call her “blasé” about it.
Andrews McMeel runs GoComics.com – they syndicate the strip along with so many others.
But again, since we don’t know who Olivia is, perhaps she was ill in the summer and needed the break and maybe that’s the case now.
One guy says in the comments at The Daily Cartoonist that it isn’t a “plum” assignment. But I beg to differ. As a cartoonist myself, I think having a nationally syndicated comic strip is a “plum” assignment. He called it a “zombie strip,” but it was alive when Olivia produced it. And thousands, if not millions of people read it over the past seven years.
Another comment on the Daily Cartoonist: “I miss the original Bushmiller style Nancy. I shudder to think what would have happened if Peanuts had been continued after Schulz’s death. I guess, however, things change and time marches on. And maybe I’m a little envious of a working cartoonist.”
Other strips have changed hands and changed the look and feel, which sort of makes it the cartoonists’ own. In the beginning, Ernie Bushmiller took Fritzi Ritz over from Larry Whittington, so there right there it shows that a person can take over a feature and really put their stamp on it.
Anyway, the new Nancy starts in January, we’ll have to check it out.
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