Nancy

Book excerpt: Classic comics from the writer of Melvin Monster Created by Ernie Bushmiller, the beloved Brillo-headed Nancy starred in her own comic book series for years, written by arguably the greatest children's comics writer of all time, John Stanley. Most famous for scripting the adventures of Marjorie Henderson Buell's Little Lulu, John Stanley is one of comics' secret geniuses. He provided a visual rough draft for all the comics he wrote and then handed off these "scripts" for someone else to render the finished art. No matter what comic he was writing, he breathed life into his characters. In Stanley's comics, Nancy is no longer a crabby cipher, but a hilarious, brilliant, scheming, duplicitous, honest, and loyal little kid — a real little kid. Her adventures with her best friend, the comically destitute Sluggo, involve moneymaking schemes to afford ice-cream sodas, botched trips to the corner store for Nancy's Aunt Fritzi, and comically raucous attempts to remove loose teeth. Drawn & Quarterly is launching several kid-friendly volumes of Nancy and Sluggo as companion volumes to Melvin Monster and Dark Horse's Little Lulu volumes. The books will be designed by Seth (The Complete Peanuts; Melvin Monster; Clyde Fans; It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken) to fill a children's comic niche that has been largely ignored for the last few decades.