A review by ederwin
How to Read Nancy: The Elements of Comics in Three Easy Panels by Paul Karasik, Mark Newgarden
4.0
I thought this would be more than I would ever want to know about Nancy, but I was wrong: I want more!
The supposed main text here is 44 two-page chapters examining in great detail the same single 3-panel, single-gag comic about Nancy squirting Sluggo with a water hose. Different chapters talk about thickness of lines, placement of speech, how the text is drawn, how the balloons are drawn, punctuation (or lack of it), weird constraints imposed by publishers, etc., etc. This could seem excessive, but it rarely is. (One case where it does go to far is applying Freudian analysis. But this may be tongue-in-cheek because they prefaced it with a quote from Bushmiller saying that there is no Freud in Nancy.)
The real main text, in my opinion, is the introduction and the appendices. The introduction is a mini biography of Bushmiller and history of the American newspaper comics scene in general. The appendices cover lots of ground on various related topics.
Since this was published in 2017, it has nothing to say about the revived strip now written by "Olivia Jaimes", and can sadly shed no light on whether Sluggo is lit.
The supposed main text here is 44 two-page chapters examining in great detail the same single 3-panel, single-gag comic about Nancy squirting Sluggo with a water hose. Different chapters talk about thickness of lines, placement of speech, how the text is drawn, how the balloons are drawn, punctuation (or lack of it), weird constraints imposed by publishers, etc., etc. This could seem excessive, but it rarely is. (One case where it does go to far is applying Freudian analysis. But this may be tongue-in-cheek because they prefaced it with a quote from Bushmiller saying that there is no Freud in Nancy.)
The real main text, in my opinion, is the introduction and the appendices. The introduction is a mini biography of Bushmiller and history of the American newspaper comics scene in general. The appendices cover lots of ground on various related topics.
Since this was published in 2017, it has nothing to say about the revived strip now written by "Olivia Jaimes", and can sadly shed no light on whether Sluggo is lit.