Features Podcasts Family Video Comics Music Tech Science Books Film & TV Games ✚

Jill

Sluggo becomes a Beatnik

David Pescovitz at 2:30 pm Wed, Jan 12, 2011

— FEATURED —

Science

Last chance to enter the Armchair Taxonomist challenge!

Book Review

Black Code: how spies, cops and crims are making cyberspace unfit for human habitation

Book Review

We Can Fix it! - a graphic novel time travel memoir

Science

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

— FOLLOW US —

Boing Boing is on Twitter and Facebook. Subscribe to our RSS feed or daily email.

 

— POLICIES —

Except where indicated, Boing Boing is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution

 

— FONTS —

Tweet
Kindle
 Images  3236 2346922938 C1A1E10A1D  Images  Images Sluggothebeatnik Fc32 Nancypanel07
Nancy is my all-time favorite comic strip and I found these two panels online here and here. They're probably from the same strip, although maybe not sequential like this. I like them together though.
  • The greatest Nancy panel ever drawn
  • Zen Sluggo tattoo
  • Nancy and Sluggo comic book scan
  • Excellent Nancy panels

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

MORE:  Art and Design

More at Boing Boing

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Hackers prepare for first "national holiday" in their honor

  • Aloisius

    When is Beatnik fashion going to come back in style? I think I’d look good in a beret.

  • Yamara

    Sluggo was always waiting for BoingBoing to come along:

    http://www.progressiveruin.com/2009/09/12/sluggo-saturday-19/

  • Anonymous

    you really just wanted us to see that photo of the biker didn’t you?

  • Antinous / Moderator

    No bongos?

    • Ugly Canuck

      IMHO congas and/or maracas would be acceptable.

      Here’s something from the era, pretty ultra-cool, daddy-oh:

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-HNZLg6ntI

      Although this next oddly similar dance is more in tune with actual beatnik musical values, as reflected by Hollywood, man:

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3oxqmKGM5g

      But I’m guessing Sluggo was the kind of beatnik that never twisted his melon by even trying to dance.

  • Anonymous

    Relatively certain that the second strip is from Bill Griffith- it’s a parody via Zippy The Pinhead. I believe it appears in the book “Are We Having Fun Yet.”

  • Rich Keller

    I have Dennis Kitchen’s Hippies, Bums and Beatniks, a Nancy anthology and I remember these being in that book. I’m pretty sure these panels are from the same strip. I can check when I get home.

    If you like randomness with your Nancy, try this:
    http://www.scottmccloud.com/4-inventions/nancy/index.html

    • David Pescovitz

      Ha! That’s great. Thanks!

  • manddroo

    I can’t wait for Fantagraphics to finally start printing the complete Nancy (they’ve pushed the date back a few times to April). I hope everyone supports it so it gets finished. I agree, Nancy is the best comic strip evaaa!@!

  • mcarrick

    Sluggo looks like Jamie Hyneman. Man.

  • haineux

    “Are We Having Fun Yet” is the finest encapsulation of Zippy the Pinhead’s obsession with Ernie Bushmiller, and it’s a masterpiece of taut, cohesive comic hijinks.

    And if you’re going to pull out Blossom Dearie, at least drop her biggest, and most surreal, hit: “Rhode Island” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ig2daWp-Pls

  • A New Challenger

    The Ultimate Nancy Generator can be a lot of fun.

  • Antinous / Moderator

    I’m shocked to discover that nobody has registered noberet.com.

  • planettom

    So, posts here have convinced me that LITTLE LULU and NANCY, which, as a kid, I thought were stupid, are actually works of genius.

    Is anyone going to pull a hat trick and wax poetic on the merits of HENRY?

    • Billy Green

      Actually, isn’t Pogo Possum about due a revival?

      • Anonymous

        What?! Pogo Possum never died!

        Heretic.

    • JonStewartMill

      I have to second this, at least as regards Nancy and Henry (I don’t remember ever seeing Little Lulu). I was, however, a major fan of Smokey Stover.

    • David Pescovitz

      Yes! Mark F. and I bonded early over Nancy but he’s definitely the biggest Little Lulu evangelist that I know.

  • Anonymous

    Here is an interesting/sad interview with the woman who inspired Bushmiller to create Nancy:

    http://wfmu.org/LCD/Early/nancyw.html

    LCD: When was the last time you spoke to Ernie?
    NANCY: He phoned me a few months before he died in 1984. He called me his “Alice.” It wasn’t until few years ago I realized what he meant. I thought he was talking about “Alice” the waitress on that TV show.

  • jfrancis

    Wasn’t (Aunt) Fritzi Ritz a flapper?

  • MacBookHeir

    Bushmillers strip was almost scientifically designed and balanced compositionally. Plus, his divine sense of comic understatement and quiet absurdity is dead in our time, full stop.

  • MrJM

    @David Pescovitz – I hope you’ve been following Sluggo Saturdays over at Mike Sterling’s Progressive Ruin: http://www.progressiveruin.com/category/sluggo-saturday/

    • David Pescovitz

      Sluggo Saturdays is so much fun.

      • Andres

        I have the pleasure of knowing Mr. Sterling, he’s the manager of my local comic book shop. He’s a swell guy but I’ll never forgive him for getting me hooked on Nancy & Sluggo (and Little Lulu too).

  • Anonymous

    @jfrancis: She sure was (and an actress too).

  • aelfscine

    Holy crap, it’s Ray Smuckles!

  • Rich Keller

    Ah, yes. The panels are indeed from the same strip, but spaced six frames apart. After some rhyming beatnik-speak, Sluggo convinces Nancy to stop her chores and go with him to the beach. Aunt Fritzi leans out the window and says, “Just try skippin’ for a dippin’ if you want a whippin’ that’s a pippin’”

  • nixiebunny

    Another place to get an occasional random Nancy panel is Princess Sparkle Pony’s photoblog. The proprietor turned me on to the astoundingness of Nancy decades ago.

    And Zippy the Pinhead is often seen contemplating the three rocks.

    • irksome

      Three rocks. Can you dig it? Yes, I know that you can.

      Beatnik joke: Cool cat goes into a diner, says, “I’ll have the pie.”
      Waitress says, “The pie is gone.”
      Beatnik replies, “Crazy, man; I’ll have two.”

      • Antinous / Moderator

        That joke is from a vintage issue of Life magazine trying to explain hipster lingo.

  • bluereed

    My mom bought me bongos and a beret when I was a little girl and we named our parakeet Maynard G Krebs…thanks for this fantastic post David! Brings back so many nice memories.

  • mneptok

    Pesco,

    Hope you’ve read Bill Griffith’s “It’s Bushmiller Time” Zippy comic.

    It’s spendy, but you’ll want this mug.

    Three rocks.

  • geech

    Thanks to Princess Sparkle Pony I now know Nancy’s dark legacy…

    http://home.comcast.net/~chdorr/images/nancy-mcp.jpg

  • Jack

    Get a job, hippie.

  • Andres

    Dennis Kitchen’s Nancy books are great but for a Nancy beginner I’d recommend Brian Walker’s The Best of Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy. Unlike Kitchen’s books (each of which has a theme) Walker’s Nancy book is organized chronologically. You even get a few pages of pre-Ernie Bushmiller Fritzi Ritz strips.

  • Anonymous

    R Crumb’s little known Nancy strips

  • David Pescovitz

    This thread brings me great joy. Thanks everyone.

  • Vanwall

    When I was a kid, my black turtle-neck-wearing beatnik aunt would greet us with this piece of lingo, and we’d have to answer in kind: Her – “Dig me, pygmy?”…Us – “Dug Bug!” Then we’d laugh like crazy.

  • Stefan Jones

    Scott McCloud created a storytelling game that uses Nancy panels pasted onto cards:

    Five Card Nancy is a Dada card game using cut-up panels from Ernie Bushmiller’s long-running 20th Century comic strip Nancy. Here are the official rules if you want to make your own deck and try it out. Special thanks to Barry Deutsch whose Usenet post in late ‘98 gave me the jumping off point for the write-up.

    Five Card Nancy

  • Andres

    I should also mention that the good people at Drawn and Quarterly are publishing John Stanley’s Nancy material.
    http://www.drawnandquarterly.com/shopCatalogLong.php?st=art&art=a49515144cb5fd

  • Jake0748

    I’m sorry… when I was a kid and read the comics religiously, I found Nancy to be annoyingly simple and stupid. I never laughed at it, just didn’t get it. I guess I was just too serious as a kid.

    Now, in my dotage… I realize how hilarious, hip and hep those strips were. And yes, I’ve always lusted after Aunt Fritzi. Thanks for this post Pesco. :D

  • Bookburn

    I don’t know anything about Nancy – but I can’t imagine these being from the same strip or even the same artist. The lettering doesn’t match. Ignore the “BEATNIK” in the first panel and look at the instances of B, I and A. There is consistency in the first panel, and great variance with the second.

    I don’t know who commentator #26 is talking about, but I’d be willing to step behind their idea just by the lettering.

  • irksome

    I’m old enough to remember, both Life magazine AND beatniks. Thanks for reminding me.

    I’ve also been on a 30-yr Mission to return “Groovy” to the lexicon. I’m nothing if not patient.

    “My motto, as I live and learn, is: Dig and Be Dug In Return.” Langston Hughes

    • Ugly Canuck

      Hey old-timer!

      From May 1945:

      “Have you seen pastures groovy
      Green Pastures was just a Technicolor movie”

      Listen for it at 1:23 mark of this V-E Day 1945 presentation of Duke Ellington’s “Jump For Joy”:

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW94GNM9FZo

      That’s the oldest pop use of the word “groovy” that I know of.

      How about you?

      • irksome

        Well, there IS the Groove Juice Symphony by the hippest cat EVER, Slim Gaillard.

        “Let’s nail an avocado seed to the roof and that’ll just about fix it.”

        Groovy, 1943?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RsU5v6DZqE&feature=related

        Long, but worth the trip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BG8zSYDZek4&feature=related

        McVout orooney mo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uz2oxMuJrA&feature=related

        My namesake song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xlLolCQXH4&feature=related

        Solid!

        • SeamusAndrewMurphy

          Oh, Slim Gaillard is the best!

          My favorite anecdote about Slim Gaillard is that he was the MC at a jazz event one night and introduced the band members. Dizzy Gillespie, already the owner of an awesome name and fully recognizable, was introduced as “Sdaz Macskibbons”.

          Who, but a complete nut would do that? From what I read, Dizzy never missed a beat, bowed when announced, and moved on.

          • irksome

            @35… On “Slim’s Jam”, he introduces Charlie Parker as “Charlie Yardbird O’Rooney” and when Parker says he hasn’t got a reed, Slim says “Well, McVouty’s (Jack McVea) got a reed, you could trim it down a bit…”

            Needing to trim a reed is an insult to sax players. Insulting Bird; brilliant. I love Slim Gaillard. Solid!

  • Anonymous

    I learned to read (now some 53-54 years ago) while sitting on my dad’s lap looking at Nancy and Sluggo comics in the daily newspaper. It was the first comic I could comprehend visually (such simple drawings), so the bubbles above their heads were the first words I processed visually. And yes, Aunt Fritzie was a hotty!

    Thanks for taking me back.

    j

  • Billy Green

    Ernie Bushmiller continued doing the strip long past the point where he should have stopped, though. In his last years, some of the strips were sometimes nonsensical, almost surreal, with no discernible joke present. One example that I still remember well (more than 20 years later) because I could never figure it out:

    Panel 1: Nancy smiling and walking across the the living room floor
    Panel 2: Wide-eyed Aunt Fritzi in the kitchen, looking in alarm over her shoulder at an “EEE-YOW” speech balloon coming through the door
    Panel 3: Visually nearly identical to Panel 2, with Aunt Fritzi yelling from the kitchen, “Are you alright, Nancy?” and a balloon coming from the door saying, “Yes, I just tripped on a piece of gum.”
    Panel 4: Nancy sitting on the floor and looking at a small black dot on the floor in front of her, with a speech balloon: “That piece of gum I bought at the store yesterday.”

    Can anyone please explain what/where the joke is?

    • buddy66

      Two sayings come to mind that may be mashed:

      X is so clumsy that s/he can’t walk and chew gum at the same time.

      X is so clumsy that s/he trips on linoleum.

      Who knows what confusions and conflations lurk in the depths of an old man’s mind?

  • Andres

    Just a couple more resources for Nancy fans:
    How to Read Nancy: The Elements of Comics in Three Easy Panels (pdf)
    http://www.laffpix.com/howtoreadnancy.pdf

    The NSFW Fritzi Ritz ‘Tijuana Bible’:
    http://www.fritziritz.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/FR_TJbible.jpg

  • buddy66

    Beatniks said ”hip” not ”hep” Hep was too 1930s.

    Bushmiller was a square.

    Little Lulu could take Nancy two out of three falls.

    Lulu was hip.

    • Antinous / Moderator

      I dig. I’m in step. When it was hip to be hep, I was hep.

    • Ugly Canuck

      You’ve got a hard lip, Herbert.

      • MrJM

        We reach!

  • Trane D.

    If you’re a Nancy fan then you’ll really want to check out Joe Brainard’s book of détourned Nancy art. It’s fabulous, intelligent, funny, and dirty.

    http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/015_01/2288

  • Anonymous

    @dp

    haa that’s so ding dang cool
    thx

    pch