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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fritzi Ritz Revisited, September 18, 2009
Comic book fans got a taste of things to come when Drawn and Quarterly released a 32 page Melvin Monster/ Nancy combo comic on Free Comic Book Day. Melvin materialized as the first volume in the John Stanley Library, and here's Nancy as the second. Melvin was entirely a Stanley creation, but Nancy's creator was Ernie Bushmiller. Nancy also began life in the newspaper comic, Fritzi Ritz, in the early '30s, graduating to her own strip in 1938. She went on to become one of the best-loved comic strips in history.
Nancy began appearing in St. John comics in 1955, and had her own Dell title by 1957. John Stanley, the brilliant cartoonist, writer, and storyboard artist of all things Dell, handled the title there, and thus this volume's inclusion in this series. Nancy: Volume One reprints the Nancy stories from the first five Dell titles, #146-150, from 1957-58. As with the Melvin Monster volume, Melvin Monster: Volume One (John Stanley Library) this is a beautiful hardback designed by Seth, known for Fantagraphics Complete Peanuts editions. There are about 150 pages of full color comics, printed on quality paper, but with a slightly worn and aged look.
The only cavil is why aren't the original covers included? Most of these covers are so evocative, one could stare at them all day, as with Irving Tripp's covers for Little Lulu, which were included in the Dark Horse Little Lulu paperback reprints. The covers may not be absolutely necessary in the case of Nancy, but when you get to the third volume, Thirteen Going on Eighteen, Thirteen Going on Eighteen: The John Stanley Library the lack of these covers, composed as they are, of masterfully drawn single panel jokes, is a great loss indeed.
One reason Nancy gained such popularity in the funnies is that Ernie Bushmiller was a master of the daily three or four panel strip. His uncluttered style exactly suited his simple subject matter; one never tired of reading Nancy, and it was the first thing I'd turn to in the daily comics. To make of Nancy one more young heroine off on adventures in the world, or to involve her in long plot lines in the comic books, would be to more or less neutralize her impact. As these comics show, Stanley did something much more clever. While the story may run around five pages, the panels are made up of mini- visual slapstick frames which resolve every few panels, almost like a daily strip within a Sunday comic.
Stanley tended to have carte blanche as it were with his characters in the comics, and introduced a gentle fantasy element. Nancy's friend, Oona, in this comic, somewhat suggests Little Itch in the Little Lulu stories. He introduces great new characters, like Bill Bungle, Burglar, and Bill Bumble, who seems to nearly be the same character. Both names show Stanley's love of alliteration.
If these volumes had the covers, they would definitely rate a five. As it is, they prove a long overdue tribute to Stanley, and will be read and reread by collectors who keep their pristine copies sealed and filed away. For the rest of us, they're a great way to revisit the wonderful days of Dell.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
WHERE ARE THE ORIGINAL COVERS???, October 9, 2009
Beautiful hardcover edition. All pages are fullcollor perfect reproductions of the great originals. But once again, WHERE ARE THE ORIGINAL COVERS??? Someone at Drawn and Quarterly is messing up all this John Stanley collection. So please, in the next volumes, PLEASE, DON'T FORGET TO INCLUDE THE ORIGINAL COVERS!!! PLEASE!
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Stanley tries his hand at Bushmiller's creations, October 9, 2009
To start on an ominous note: a number of people appear to have the wrong idea about the issue numbers and dates for this volume. The title page says that the book contains stories from Dell NANCY #146-150 (1957-58). In searching out appropriate screen grabs for the blog post, however, I found an electronic copy of the first story, "Oona Goosepimple," complete with original Dell indicia -- and, guess what, it first appeared in NANCY #162 (April 1959). Wikipedia, and the estimable Don Markstein, come closer than D&Q, but they miss the target as well, with each citing NANCY #166 as the site of Oona's debut. So both the Internet and the "dead tree peddlers" struck out in this case.
Actually, the first appearance of the Wednesday Addams-like Oona highlights an important point about Stanley's approach to Ernie Bushmiller's characters. Having pretty much burned out on LITTLE LULU, Stanley was probably delighted to put a new set of "Lulu-esque" characters through their paces. The fact that Nancy, Sluggo, and company were well-established figures in a popular, long-running comic strip, however, must have given the creator some pause. Lulu, who began her career as a pantomime character in gag cartoons, had had plenty of room for development when Stanley began to flesh out her neighborhood. Nancy and Sluggo may have had shallow, uninspired personalities, but Stanley must have felt that he needed to hew to them, at least for a while, as he settled down to his task. One can therefore regard the eccentric Oona's appearance as something of a "sowing of the wind" with an eye towards reaping a later "whirlwind" of story possibilities. The rest of the early stories in this collection are fairly unremarkable, making Oona -- a black-clad girl with beady eyes who gives everyone around her a case of nerves and lives in a spooky house with a surprise (usually of the nasty variety) around every corner -- stand out all the more starkly.
Once Stanley gets his feet under him, he begins to pull Nancy and Sluggo in directions the unimaginative Bushmiller would never have contemplated (though Dan Gormley's art, if a bit more unpredictable than Bushmiller's, does give the comics the same stodgy look as the comic strip). You can see it coming when Stanley devotes an entire one-page gag to sending up Liberace in the person of "La Plunke," an impresario with a rhinestone-studded piano. For panel after panel, Nancy makes bitchy comments about La Plunke's talents, or lack thereof, climaxing by claiming that La Plunke, and not his piano, should be "hung" when she sees the latter getting lowered out of the stage door. Nancy's remarks scandalize her Aunt Fritzi a bit, which seems only right, as Nancy's relationship with her aunt is a lot more abrasive than Lulu's with her parents. Perhaps Stanley thought that Fritzi's not being Nancy's mother gave him a bit more leeway. Likewise, after treating Sluggo as a generic boy character in earlier stories, Stanley takes Bushmiller's notion of Sluggo as a "dead-end kid" and runs with it. In "Lower Education," Nancy forces Sluggo to go to school but thinks better of it after Sluggo starts fantasizing about using his education to become President. She ultimately convinces the janitor to keep Sluggo in the basement and have him sweep floors. Tubby may have played hooky on occasion, but the existence of parental figures in the LITTLE LULU "universe" wouldn't have allowed for this sort of a cynical resolution.
Stanley's innovations in handling the NANCY characters didn't prevent him from borrowing liberally from the LULU "template." Rich kid Rollo Haveall is basically Wilbur van Snobbe, take two, while the crook Bill Bungle (aka Bill Bungler, aka Bill Bumble -- perhaps Bill's incompetence was catching) reflects Stanley's apparent delight in using an adult figure who is hopelessly inept at his supposed specialty, a la the truant officer Mr. McNabbem in the LULU stories. If the NANCY stories -- even at their best -- fall a little short of the quality of the LULU oeuvre, then one reason may be the lack of a strong "bench" of supporting players. In the stories collected here, at least, Nancy has no "girl sidekick" to compare with Lulu's Annie; eager though Oona is to make friends and do things with Nancy, she's essentially a walk-on oddball. Likewise, the annoying neighbor kid Pee Wee isn't nearly as memorable (or annoying) as Alvin of "Story Telling Time" fame. Given the raw materials that he had to work with, however, Stanley's NANCY tales are unexpectedly fun and entertaining.
The last page of this volume has a picture of John Stanley (in the company of his editor Oscar LeBeck, Dan Gormley, and other worthies at Western's New York office) and a brief biography -- which just happens to be the same one that appeared at the end of the earlier MELVIN MONSTER collection. What this Library really needs is a volume-by-volume, bit-by-bit biography of Stanley in the manner of the articles that appeared in Another Rainbow's LITTLE LULU LIBRARY. As long as Fantagraphics keeps reprinting the same two-page Charles Schulz bio in THE COMPLETE PEANUTS, though, I suppose it would be somewhat hypocritical of me to complain about D&Q dropping the ball.
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