Three Rocks
The Story of Ernie Bushmiller: The Man Who Created Nancy
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Abrams
Published:28th Sep '23
Should be back in stock very soon
From Bill Griffith, the acclaimed creator of Zippy the Pinhead, comes a history of comics as told through the life story of Ernie Bushmiller and his iconic comic strip Nancy
From Bill Griffith, the acclaimed creator of Zippy the Pinhead, comes the story of Ernie Bushmiller and his iconic comic strip Nancy, told in an original graphic novel that recounts the history of comics and the secrets of comic book storytellingFrom Bill Griffith, creator of Zippy the Pinhead and Nobody’s Fool, comes Three Rocks, a biography of cartoonist Ernie Bushmiller, creator of the iconic comic strip Nancy. But this graphic novel is more than just the bio of a single comic book artist. It is the story of this American art form, tracing its inception in 1895 with the Yellow Kid, the creation of Nancy in 1933, and all the strips that followed, including Peanuts and The Far Side. When Bushmiller died in 1982, Nancy was running in almost 900 daily newspapers—a number few syndicated cartoonists ever achieve—and today it is experiencing a resurgence thanks to the work of new writer/artist Olivia Jaimes.Nancy is hailed as the “perfect” comic strip by fans and cartoonists alike. The title Three Rocks refers to the trope of three hemispherical rocks often seen in a Bushmiller landscape—enough to communicate environment to the reader (two wouldn’t read properly, and four is one too many). This distillation helped contribute to the iconic, diagrammatic look of Nancy, making it a comic strip not about childhood, like Peanuts, but about the nature of what it means to be a comic strip—the perfect avatar for Griffith to expand upon his philosophy of creating comics, specifically humorous comics.
“If you stare deeply enough into the bottomless abyss of black dots that serve as the eyes of Nancy and Sluggo, would you live to tell the tale? Well, Bill Griffith has. And the tale he tells is a complex, peculiar, and funny graphic biography of Ernie Bushmiller, creator of the brilliantly strange (and strangely brilliant) Nancy and Sluggo (as well as Fritzi Ritz and Phil Fumble). As the widest-ranging cartoon chronicler of American absurdity in our time, Bill Griffith has topped himself. This is an instant comic-strip classic!” * Matt Groening *
“For many years, I’ve devoured Bill Griffith’s work. It’s always inspiring and engrossing. As it never fails to do, Griffith’s brilliance and consummate drawing chops shine through. Three Rocks is amazing!” * Emil Ferris *
“I inhaled this book. If there’s one Nancy mystery greater than the peculiar, clean hum of the strip itself, it’s what Ernie Bushmiller, the man, was actually like. In this last, best volume of a three-book talismanic paean to the inspirations that have sustained and formed him for the past half century, underground comix legend Bill Griffith grafts all the real messiness of life—research, anecdotes, and interviews with those who knew Bushmiller—to perfect examples of the distilled graphic haiku of the Connecticut Zen master of the comic strip. The result, quite simply, is a page-turning, standard-setting, must-have work of biographical art. Two words: Three Rocks. Five stars!” * Chris Ware *
“As the curator of the fictional Bushmiller Museum in Altadena, California, I was thrilled to learn from reading Three Rocks that there’s a fictional one in Stamford, Connecticut, too!” * Tom Gammill *
“Bill Griffith is a master of pen-and-ink graphic storytelling. This delightful book is, first and foremost, a well-researched biography of Ernie Bushmiller, creator of Nancy and one of the unsung geniuses of the comics business. It is also a thought-provoking discourse on the inner dynamics of cartooning and its relationship to fine art. The narrative alternates deftly between realistically rendered scenes of Bushmiller’s life and career to flashbacks, future fantasies, dream sequences, clever asides by Nancy herself, and informative insights from the author. It is a thoroughly entertaining journey into Bushmillerland that is destined to take its place among the select group of classic graphic novels.” * Brian Walker *
ISBN: 9781419745904
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
272 pages