12/05/2024
Storybook Beginnings: Born in 1905 in the Bronx, Ernest Paul Bushmiller is possibly the last of a long line of cartoonists who began their careers in storybook fashion, an an errand boy in the art department of a great newspaper. In Bushmiller's case it was the N. Y. World, and, at age 17, he rubbed elbows with such early giants as Rudolph Dirks, H. T. Webster, R.M.
Brinkerhoff, and Milt Gross.
During the time he attended night classes at the National Academy of Design, and after three years—in 1925-
-he
inherited a struggling pretty-girl strip endemic to the era, Fritzi Ritz.
Bushmiller also drew in a simple, uncluttered comic style with no pretensions. Fritzi Ritz was a straight gag-a-day strip, in the early years revolving around the title character's attempts in the movie business. Bushmiller's friendships as well as these movie themes resulted in his own trip to Hollywood, where in 1930 he created general situations and gags for Harold Lloyd's Movie Crazy.
The Rise of Nancy: One of the incidental characters, Fritzi's niece Nancy, began to gain prominence during the '30s, and in 1938 Nancy made friends with Sluggo Smith. Thereafter the subplot-characters eclipsed their elders. A half-page Sunday companion to Fritzi Ritz was Phil Fumble (starring one of Fritzi's half-pint suitors), and before long Nancy was the star of her own strip abd the rest is history.
Bushmiller's style during this
assistant to Mell Lazarus, and u
period was lively, attractive and has written for several comic
book companies, including
full of animation, expression and pretty girls. Afterwards it
Western (on titles like Tweety
settled into what many critics
and Sylvester, The Twilight Zone, Boris Karloff, and
called cliched patterns, but Nancy was always after the '40s
Underdog); DC (House of
one of the top ten strips in terms
Mystery); and Warren (Creepy).
of circulation, and no less than
An admirer of Bushmiller's
Mad magazine once seriously
"gentle humor," Lasky calls
complimented Bushmiller on his
Nancy "an American tradition"
inventiveness and consistency.
and plans to be a "perfec-
Bushmiller won the National
tionist" in continuing the
Cartoonists Society "Reuben"
