Original artwork for Fritzi Ritz comic strip, November 19, 1961

N.p.: N.p., 1961. Original eight-panel artwork for a Sunday strip of Ernie Bushmiller's comic strip "Fritzi Ritz," first published on November 19, 1961.

"Fritzi Ritz" was originally created in 1922 by Larry Whittington. In 1925 the strip was taken over by Bushmiller, which would eventually evolve into Bushmiller's seminal comic strip Nancy. The Sunday edition of "Fritzi Ritz" was continued by Bushmiller until 1967.

As with American cinema, it was the French who first championed the studied simplicity of Bushmiller's un-deconstructible combination of rigid artistic style and even more rigidly governed humor. In 2012, Fantagraphics Press took on the long overdue task of putting Nancy into book form.

In our estimation, Daniel Clowes put it best in his introduction to Fantagraphics' first volume of Bushmiller's long run. Clowes astutely points out that his characters seem to come "from some primal Jungian dreamscape, miraculously transmitted into the morning paper." He goes on to say how he imagines Bushmiller at work, "carefully extracting every shred of irony from each frame."

24 x 17 inches. Near Fine.