Bill Griffiths talks the life and legacy of Ernie Bushmiller

I think it’s fair to say that there’s a pretty big disparity when it comes to comics’ relationship with biographies. There are plenty of graphic novel biographies on the lives of film stars, historical figures, activists, sports legends — even the guy who invented Tetris, for God’s sake. What there is a shortage of, however, is comics about…well, the people who make comics. For that matter, there are even fewer about the great minds of the near-bygone era of newspaper strip comics.

As fate would have it though, there are people like cartoonist Bill Griffith — creator of Zippy the Pinhead, and one of the few cartoonists who has been churning out hilarious, poignant, and clever daily comics strips for nearly half a century — whose obsession with Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy has lead to the publication of Three Rocks: The Story of Ernie Bushmiller, the Man Who Created Nancy.

For readers and fellow cartoonists alike, Bushmiller’s Nancy has been widely regarded as one of the cornerstones of formalism, humor, and entertainment in comics history, and Griffith’s personal passion for the cartoonist and his work shines bright through the new biography. Following Bushmiller from his teenage roots as a copy boy for the New York World newspaper to his soaring legacy through the panels of Nancy, Griffith unpacks a life of a cartoonist that offers a nuance akin to the same eponymous three rocks of it’s title. Following its debut at Comic Con International: San Diego just this year, Popverse was able to catch up with Hall of Fame inductee Griffith post-convention via email to ask about the process of researching — and cartooning in his own right — such an iconic life and strip.

Popverse: I know that you’ve been a massive Bushmiller Nancy fan for ages — that much is clear. But what was it about Nancy that hooked you? What, way back in the day, said “This is it. This is the strip I’m obsessed with”?

Bill Griffiths: Before I could really follow the strip, as a five-year-old kid reading Nancy in the Sunday newspaper, I focused on the lettering. It contained no punctuation and was very easy to read. I just felt compelled to read it. Mad artist Wally Wood accurately said, “It’s harder not to read Nancy than to read Nancy.”

Nancy is the boiled down essence of what comics are. For me, the quirky characters, the timeless cartoon landscape, even the casual surrealism, are all in service of Bushmiller’s treatise on the nature of comics and what they do best. What only they can do. Other comics may take you on flights of fancy or pull you into dramatic adventures. Nancy makes you aware ofsh the three or four panels it takes to reach its inevitable sight gag ending, what Bushmiller called the “snapper.” Nancy doesn’t tell you what it's like to be