Sluggo becomes a Beatnik

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.

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.

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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 â€˜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 dÃ©tourned 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