‘Zippy’ Author Bill Griffith on ‘Nancy’s’ Ernie Bushmiller

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'Three Rocks' by Bill Griffith

'Three Rocks' by Bill Griffith

“‘Peanuts’ tells you what it’s like to be a child. ‘Nancy’ tells you what it’s like to be a comic strip,” says cartoonist Bill Griffith, comparing Charles Schulz’s creation to that of Ernie Bushmiller. Griffith’s Three Rocks: The Story of Ernie Bushmiller: The Man Who Created Nancy (Harry N. Abrams) offers a thorough biography the of the artist. And naturally enough for the man responsible for his own syndicated comic feature, “Zippy” (AKA “Zippy the Pinhead”), Three Rocks is a graphic biography. 

Further fleshing out his analogy regarding Nancy as the distillation of the essence of comic strips, Griffith harkens to black and white cinema. “The two greatest silent film comedy giants were Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton,” he begins. “Chaplin, who was obviously a great physical comedian, wanted you to like his character, to feel sympathy for him, which sometimes veered into sentimentality. Keaton didn’t care if you liked his screen persona or not. He just wanted to give you a thrillingly entertaining ride. Keaton did things that only film can do to get there. Nancy’s punchlines are almost always sight gags. Nancy is all Keaton, with no Chaplin.”

The idea behind Griffith’s book began to form with the 1988 publication of Brian Walker’s The Best of Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy. Three Rocks' lengthy gestation was prolonged by a couple years of unfavorable business conditions created by COVID-19 and the Chinese shipping container shortage. About Walker’s book, Griffith continues, “It contained the first detailed bio of Bushmiller and started me thinking there was more there.” 

Invaluable Insights

To find out more about the artist who first added the character of Nancy to the “Fritzi Ritz” (Nancy’s Aunt Fritzi) strip Bushmiller took over from Larry Whittington in 1925, “I scoured the web for anything I could find. I read thousands of ‘Nancy’ strips.” remembers Griffth. “I also conducted extensive interviews with Jim Carlsson who was Ernie’s assistant and close friend for the last 12 years of his life. Jim gave me insights into Ernie the man and Ernie the cartoonist, that no one else could. He was invaluable.” As for further research, he adds, “Mark Newgarden and Paul Karasik, who published How to Read Nancy in 2017, gave me access to all the interviews they did with people who either knew or worked with Ernie, many of whom had since passed away. Again, invaluable.” 

Though Bushmiller has received praise from Griffith (whose “Zippy” was published for a while in the Milwaukee Journal’s Green Sheet for several years, though nothing near the almost 42 years of “Nancy’s” run there) and other artists who found funny paper profundity in “Nancy,” Bushmiller had a simple agenda. “Ernie thought he was doing something very simple every day with ‘Nancy’—making you laugh at the last panel, which he called ‘the snapper.’ When he finished a strip, he would hold it up and ask, ‘Does it have enough catnip?’” says Griffith.  

And though Bushmiller went for gut reactions to “Nancy,” the cartoonist Griffith memorializes didn’t lack for intellect nor taste. “He was clearly not the ‘gum chewer’ he often described his readers as being. Ernie's favorite artist was Diego Valezquez. His favorite musician was Fats Waller. His favorite humorist was S. J. Perelman. He may have never graduated high school, but he was a sophisticated man.” His subject’s sophistication came as a surprise to Griffith; perhaps less surprising is the gulf between Bushmiller’s politics and his biographer's leftward leaning. 

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Image: zippythepinhead.com

Bill Griffith and Zippy

Bill Griffith and Zippy

“I tried to take a non-judgmental attitude toward Ernie’s political views,” Griffith concedes. “Ernie was politically conservative, most likely as a result of his humble origins in the Bronx, where the only way to avoid a life of manual labor was to rely on your wits. This tends to create a worldview where ‘pulling yourself up by your bootstraps’ takes hold and generosity toward those who remained at a lower economic level is harder to come by.” However, disagreement over public policy does nothing to dim Griffith’s appreciation of Bushmiller’s comedic genius. 

“‘Nancy’ is so tightly composed it can even be read at the size of a postage stamp. That’s what happens when you boil the components of comics down to their essence. ‘Nancy’ looks good at any size,” Griffith observes. Zippy’s aesthetic isn't anywhere Bushmiller’s minimalism. What, then, draws Griffith to Nancy? 

Griffith’s minimal conclusion: “Opposites attract!”