Random Acts Of Violence Against Ernie Bushmiller

Ugh, I was going to politely refrain from mentioning this horror.

United Feature Syndicate has a new daily feature, Random Acts of Nancy, credited to Guy Gilchrist and John Lotshaw. Here is their description:

In the 81+ years that Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy and her pals have been cavorting around the funny papers, there have been many surreal, bizarre, manic, unexplainable panels of fun!

Every day, we will bring you one of those moments. If you are dazed, confused, and don't have any clue why and how you are being entertained … You are now a true Nancy fan. We of "Three Rocks" salute you! Brought to you by Guy Gilchrist and John Lotshaw. 

A presentation of isolated panels, often particularly unusual when removed from context, from old Nancy strips. What a fantastic idea! Why didn't I ever think of that? Oh, wait, that's right, I did.

To be fair, I'm hardly the first person to do this, but it seems pretty obvious that UFS "borrowed" the "Random Acts of Nancy" idea from this blog. Hey, they're the rights holders! Fair enough! It's their "property." As I mentioned in my last post, I'm an image services and permissions professional, so what can I say?

Well, what I can say is that Gilchrist just isn't all that good at picking out great Nancy panels. In fact, he's pretty uninspired. Also, OMG what is up with the terrible, horrible, unbelievably bad coloring with the exaggerated fake halftone patterns? Is that Mr. Lotshaw's contribution? These panels all come from strips which were originally published in black and white; this is modern Photoshop coloring, and it is... beyond atrocious. Awful.

On a side note, the comments sections are kind of funny/sad. Some people have pointed out how they "stole" the idea for the feature, but the comments I really like are the ones that say, basically, "Oh, this reminds me of when Nancy was good!" Gilchrist himself participates, and eventually started getting defensive and pissy, which practically makes me levitate with happiness. Keep in mind that Gilchrist is the hired hack who has been drawing the grotesque zombie Nancy which still runs in newspapers today, and that he is guilty of transforming Fritzi Ritz into a trashy alt-Loretta-Lynn rockabilly babe, so please spare me from feeling sorry for him:

Let’s chat about exploitation and piracy. These are copyrighted works. There is only one entity that controls the copyrights for United features and upholds the rights of Ernie Bushmiller. There is only one other entity. That is my company. This “Gilchrist” person who has been writing and drawing NANCY for 19 years. Also, I am the only legal licensing agent of this work. I was going to let you dig a bigger hole….so…don’t mind me…keep shovelling [sic].

This is because somebody is relentlessly trolling him in his own comments section, which is mean and hilarious and great and, no, ha ha, not me.

And, bummer, Gilchrist hints in other comments that they're coming up with other ideas of how to exploit and abuse Bushmiller's creation, so yay! Stay tuned!

Jayson Musson "Does" Bushmiller

(Photos: Salon 94)

Now showing at Salon 94, NYC, is Jayson Musson's Exhibit of Abstract Art, a selection of paintings and sculptures based entirely on Ernie Bushmiller's "take" on modern art and design in his beloved "Nancy" comic strip.

I'm torn about this show. The Bushmiller fan in me really loves the "tingle of recognition" these works bring. Seeing Rollo the rich kid's lamp (above) is undeniably a pop culture thrill.

The critic/art historian in me, however, is less thrilled. The show seems less like appropriation to me and more like fabrication and... well... wholesale theft, to be honest. Is Musson paying tribute to Bushmiller, or is he simply stealing his wallet?

The most obvious case of a "fine" artist appropriating from comics is, of course, Roy Lichtenstein. But Lichtenstein profoundly and vigorously altered, revised and transformed his source material, far beyond mere recontextualization. The only transformation I'm seeing here (besides making pen and ink drawings "real") is the addition of color, which appears more like interior decoration than deliberate artistic theory to me. He made the stuff really pretty! Personally, I'd prefer the paintings to be black and white.

And finally, I can't help but notice that Musson chose the easiest Bushmiller modern art parodies to recreate. 

But, my goodness, he made the stuff REALLY pretty.  At the end of the argument, that Bushmiller fan in me pushes aside that critic/art historian in me and says Please manufacture this as a 4" die-cast figure:

In the balance, I think the marquee name here should be "Ernie Bushmiller" rather than "Jayson Musson."

Big thanks to Pony Pal J. D. at Yale University (!) for alerting me to this exhibition.

UPDATE: Much appreciated response from Mr. Musson in the comments.

UPDATE:Thinking about this show more, I come to the conclusion that I really do love it. The installation appears to be really, truly beautiful. and the colors aren't actually all that easy; they're well thought-out. It's actually a great color show. I'm still a little iffy on the level of appropriation going on, though.

Art Collection: Drawing For "Nancy" Daily By Ernie Bushmiller, 1960

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Another early 60s Bushmiller in superb, nearly untouched condition. I don't really have much to say about this one! It's good, of course, but it doesn't absolutely kill me like others in my collection from this period. Also, is it just me, or is that enclosure for the kangaroos not very well thought out? That wall seems awfully low. Actually, the longer I look at this one, the worse it gets; those animal drawings are terrible. You can tell that Bushmiller started with the idea of doing a kangaroo gag and then worked backwards. It's always a lot of fun when Nancy and Sluggo go to the zoo!

Some details:

Art Collection: Drawing For 11-27-1965 "Nancy" By Ernie Bushmiller

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What a treat: a rare mid-sixties Bushmiller original is absolutely pristine condition. There isn't a hint of yellowing in the Benday overlay, and the board looks practically like it just came off the press:

(Detail of Benday dots with cuts visible, and a little knife scraping on the upper left.)

The gag is so perfectly constructed. At first I wondered why Bushmiller hadn't condensed the strip into three panels, but there's actually no way to do it as economically as he does here. The second panel can't be dropped without damaging the gag.

Irma is doing the classic Bushmiller "head bob" up and down from panel to panel, bouncing the composition forward (see here and here for more examples). Note, too, the subtle way the horizon line leads the eye forward in the first two panels.

The payoff is just glorious Nancy sight gag nirvana.

One thing I love is that Bushmiller used Benday dots for Irma's dress, but did the ultra-laborious "tweed" pattern on Nancy's dress (it's November!) by hand, which is a useful indication of the border between what an obsessive technician is and is not willing to do:

It was tempting to title this "Nancy's Candy Glory-Hole".

And don't even get me started on fences in Bushmiller. You'll have to wait for Mark Newgarden and  Paul Karasik's How to Read Nancy, due to be released, I believe, later this year by Fantagraphics, because evidently it will include extensive Bushmiller fence scholarship. Praise!

Unwise Bushmiller Purchase

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The drawing shown above is currently available for purchase on eBay. The drawing is signed by Ernie Bushmiller (signature looks real to me). But is the drawing BY Ernie Bushmiller?

What do you think?

My theory is that the drawing was probably sent to Bushmiller with a note saying approximately the following:

Dear Mr. Bushmiller:

I'm a twelve-year-old girl, and I drew the enclosed picture of Nancy! Can I get your autograph?

That's my theory, anyway.

And again, like this Peanuts drawing, I don't think the eBay seller is trying to trick us, as in the Gallery on Baum's notorious attempt; I just don't think they know what they have. So this is another type of non-genuine drawing that isn't necessarily a forgery: the autographed fan drawing. Over the years things like this take on the characteristics of fakes and forgeries through no fault of their own.

There is another possibility, of course: that somebody added the Nancy drawing to a preexisting Bushmiller autograph to make it worth more. Either way, I'm not buying it (literally or figuratively).

Coming in the next day or two: Wise  (very wise!) Bushmiller purchase!

Art Collection: "Nancy" Drawing For 02-11-53 By Ernie Bushmiller

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"My name is Ernie Bushmiller, king of comic strip artists," this drawing shouts. "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Despite its somewhat battered condition, this new acquisition is instantly my favorite Bushmiller. The final panel is such a tour de force of technical and compositional mastery that it practically hurts to look at it. As I've said before, original Nancy drawings from the 50s are scarce, so this was a lucky get.

Questions for discussion:

• Which panel do you think Bushmiller conceived/drew first?
• Are the first two panels useless space fillers? Why or why not?
• Why didn't Bushmiller use Benday/Zip-a-Tone for the table's shadow? Was he insane or just fastidious?

Some details:

The detail above just kills me; it's the only scraping/correction in the entire drawing. Viewed so close, it doesn't seem to make any sense, but graphically it's ingenious and crucial for clarity.

Art Collection: "Nancy" Daily Drawing By Ernie Bushmiller For New Year's Day, 1959

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Nancy dailies don't get much better than this! The joke is corny, as always, but the gag construction is perfect, meticulous. For some reason, original drawings by Bushmiller from the 50s and early 60s are scarce, so this was a lucky score from Heritage Auctions.

I think my favorite things about it are in the first panel (no, not Fritzi's breasts): the way Nancy's word balloon goes "around the corner," and that incredibly subtle yet compositionally crucial black bar in the upper left. And... well, hubba hubba, Aunt Fritzi!

Some details:

Facebook Users: A Favor, Please?

For some reason, my post about Gallery on Baum's terrible Ernie Bushmiller forgery is getting a lot of hits via Facebook today. Since I don't have a Facebook account (I know, right?), I can't figure out where it's coming from. Can some Pony Pal track down this FB post and tell me what's going on?

Thank  you!

In thanks, I'll post a recently acquired *real* 1959 Bushmiller drawing, featuring Aunt Fritzi in a negligee, tomorrow.

UPDATE: it might be a user named Shaun Clancy? Or Terry Beatty? Again, I can't see this stuff, so screenshots would be greatly appreciated.

UPDATE: Thanks much to Pony Pal Nelly, who located the post by Terry Beatty.

I ended up laying off Gallery on Baum, because despite my best efforts, few people seemed to care, and that includes the law enforcement officials who simply ignored my efforts to expose this fraud. :( I regard this as a personal and professional failure. DOUBLE :(

However, I just looked at GoB's eBay page, and everything they're selling at the moment is genuine, so maybe they've cut it out with the forgeries? I like to think I gave them enough of a "Google Problem™" to put an end to their vending of forgeries. So perhaps that's a victory of sorts after all?

UPDATE AGAIN: Terry Beatty, a very talented cartoonist,  responded in the comments to this post. Perhaps we can revamp this investigation? I'm frankly pessimistic, but we'll see.

Art Collection: Two "Nancy" Daily Drawings By Ernie Bushmiller, June 1947

(Click either overall image for bigger!)

Both of these pen, brush, and ink drawings are on boards measuring 6.5" x 22", and were published just two days apart from each other on June 26 and 28, 1947, and both are reprinted in Fantagraphics' wonderful new Nancy Likes Christmas collection, which features the complete dailies from 1946-1948 (more on that below). The one above also has a "rough draft" of an unused punchline written in pencil above the final panel: "He opens at Carnegie Hall next week," which would have been funnier. (By the way, neither of these are folded in the center; they just look that way because of how I scanned them.)

I mentioned previously that in the mid 40s, Bushmiller was still doing "theme of the week" strips revolving around a common activity or character. These two strips are from a week which featured an unnamed character, the "new brainy girl" who would never be seen again, and it's no wonder, because she is a true grotesque:

The content of these strips is a bit of a bummer: smart girls are ugly, pretentious, and unsuitable girlfriend material (as Sluggo discovers to his detriment).  In the beginning of the week, Nancy gives the girl a chance, but then quickly tires of her insufferable ways (she physically assaults her twice!).

 

(Above: note how far into the hairdo the artist begins (ends?) Nancy's "hair spikes".)

These strips brilliantly demonstrate Bushmiller in transition: the June 26 strip is fairly cluttered, but the June 28 one is quite a bit simpler, and the use of the fence for the "reveal" in the final panel gives a clear indication of the artist's strategies to come (nobody used fences as persistently or as cleverly as Bushmiller).



Technically, these drawings are incredibly sure-handed. Pencil lines, if there are any, are not visible. There is no white paint on either of these, but plenty of scraping where the cartoonist adjusted contours and executed minor, obsessive corrections.

As I mentioned above, both of these (along with the rest of "new brainy girl" week) are reprinted in Nancy Likes Christmas, Fantagraphics' second volume of Nancy dailies. If you hesitated to buy the first volume (which covers 1943-45) because Bushmiller hadn't yet hit his stride in the early forties, don't let that stop you from picking up this one. Design quibbles aside (Why, I wonder, does this new book not say "complete dailies 1946-48" anywhere on the cover? Who concluded that yellow type on a white background was legible? Do the endpapers really have to be so ugly?), these years show Bushmiller progressing from "very good" to "absolutely great" as he began to cast off the "theme of the week" approach and gradually settled into the "disconnected gag of the day" formula which served him so well. The strips are funnier, more surprising, there are fewer dated references to contemporary news events, and the compositions become increasingly strict and ingenious as the artist learned more and more how to lead the eye.The next volumes will be KILLER. I can't wait.

Order it today!

Bookshelf: The "Nancy" Dictionary

Young people probably encounter certain big, thick books and think, "What are these things? So many words!" I am, of course, referring to dictionaries and telephone books, probably the saddest relics of print's bygone age.

You'll pry my copy of Houghton-Mifflin's New College Edition of the American Heritage Dictionary (1976) from my cold, lifeless hands, however. Why? It's not that great, even by print dictionary standards, though totally serviceable. Why is this particular has-been deserving of my fondness?

Simple! When you look up "comic strip," you find this:

So tiny, and yet still so perfectly legible.

Coming up later this evening: two great original "Nancy" drawings from the 40s.

Vincent van Bushmiller

Usually when cartoonists co-opt Nancy and Sluggo, I don't enjoy it nearly as much as you think I would. It's such sacred ground, generally best left untrodden. And, of course, there's nothing worse than the hideous, blasphemous, yet official "Nancy" still running in papers today, a ghastly and trashy horror spectacle perpetuated by hacks-for-hire Brad and Guy Gilchrist.

Somehow, though, French cartoonist Vincent hits the sweet spot in a series of Bushmiller riffs he's posted on his blog over the past couple of days. He's managed to evoke Saint Ernie without attempting to slavishly copy his drawings. He's synthesized his own style with Bushmiller's, and the results are just great. Plus, Louis C.K. as Sluggo is a hilarious gag.

United Features should immediately hire him to take over the daily.

*golf clap*

Art Collection DOUBLE HEADER! Two "Nancy" Daily Strip Drawings By Ernie Bushmiller, 1969

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I recently picked up two original drawings by Ernie Bushmiller dating from Summer, 1969. Both are two-panel strips, and both were re-published in 1977 when Bushmiller's Parkinson's was getting the better of him (you can see where the old signatures, copyright notices and dates were whited-out and replaced, but the drawings and lettering were not revised), The boards measure 7" x 21", and both feature the artist's characteristic "priming the nib" marks at their top edges.

The one above (published July 21, 1969 and April 7, 1977) is particularly masterful, featuring a kind of criss-cross composition, where Nancy/Rollo get smaller and lower in the second panel, while the well gets larger and higher, stopping the eyes and emphasizing the end of the gag. I love the subtlety and economy of how just one small detail, the handle, indicates that the figures have moved to the other side of the well. The drawings are, of course, immaculate. Here are some details:

I also love the character Rollo, the rich kid. He wasn't like Ritchie Rich or other cartoon rich kids. Bushmiller didn't usually use the character to make jokes about wealth per se, but to lampoon the wealthy's taste for modernism in all its pricey forms (incomprehensible modern art, uncomfortable modernist furniture, etc.). In one strip, Rollo tells Nancy that his family is going to have a "real old-fashioned Christmas" just before revealing their cubist, abstract Christmas tree.

Next up is the drawing for the strip published on June 13, 1969 and June 29, 1977:

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Even by Bushmiller's standards, this is a strangely random and pointless gag (the kind we love), but totally unpredictable. Some details:

Fantagraphics calls the 1940s and 50s Bushmiller's "classic years", but to me it's his 60s strips, so minimalist and precise, which are his strongest work, although perhaps less easy to appreciate because they're so barren. It's almost as if, in the 50s, he became the Mondrian of cartoonists, and then in the 60s, the Barnett Newman of the medium. 

Art Collection: "Nancy" Daily Strip Drawing By Ernie Bushmiller, 1947, With Bonus Plug For Upcoming Fantagraphics Volume

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I'm pleased and a little relieved that Fantagraphics is now accepting pre-orders for their second volume of Nancy reprints. This second volume of the series contains the complete dailies (no Sundays) for the years 1946-1948. The publisher hasn't posted a preview yet, so that's where I come in, as I own two original drawings for the strips which will appear in this one. One of them I posted already here, and the other is above.

This installment should be really good, and should show Bushmiller's continuing evolution away from his earlier "gag theme of the week" strategy to the "disconnected joke of the day" approach we've come to associate with his work. Also, his compositional skills tightened up considerably during those years. The strip above, for instance, has a nice see-saw-like rhythm accomplished through the placement of Sluggo in the panels, but still retains his older "jigsaw" strategy of filling in every single space with what would later seem like extraneous details. One somewhat amusing "lazy" detail is the way, in the second panel, the plaid pattern on the man's coat continues uninterrupted over the arm.

Here's the cover design for the upcoming book, which seems to indicate that Fantagraphics has committed to making this the ugliest, most bafflingly designed series of comic strip reprints ever:

How To: Set A New Standard In Restroom Demarcation

The area where I work in the National Gallery of Art's West Building was recently elaborately renovated. What once looked like a particularly dowdy college library back hallway now, after two years of work, resembles a mental hospital designed by a tech-gadget fetishist. So that's a big improvement! It's a little like working in a Stanley Kubrick film.

One thing the crew has been lagging on, however, has been the labeling stage. Months into our relocation into our newly shiny and austerely glamorous digs, our offices and facilities are still labeled with room numbers scrawled in Sharpie on masking tape. How gauche! Finally, I decided I had to do something better, at least for two prominent rooms:

They work so well! Now, everybody in the hallway is hoping the designers will make Nancy and Sluggo the new standard of restroom signage at the Gallery. But why stop there? Demand it everywhere you go in your city! Or make your own!

Random Nancy Panel

(1971)

I'm going to give Bushmiller a pass on the obviously faulty drawing of the wire wastepaper basket here. 

Photoblogging: Work Desk Still Life

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Random Nancy Panel

Follow-Up: How Does Gallery On Baum Feel About PSP Forgery Investigation? A Sockpuppet Speaks!

You may recall the terrible Ernie Bushmiller forgery I wrote about at the beginning of my investigation of the many, many fake drawings sold by the Gallery on Baum. Shortly after my point-by-point breakdown of why the drawing is not genuine, in which I used multiple techniques to prove that 1. the drawing was traced, and 2. the drawing was not traced by Ernie Bushmiller, a Pony Pal contacted the GoB through eBay, and very shortly thereafter the listing ended under mysterious circumstances.Suddenly, the auction was over, two days early, and the drawing was sold (as well as a particularly bad Popeye drawing which I criticized in the same post), even though it hadn't been a "buy it now" listing. I immediately suspected that the drawing had "fake sold" in order to get it off eBay without it appearing as if it had been withdrawn.

A decent interval later, the "buyer" left feedback on the dubious purchase, which allowed me to see who the buyer was. To backtrack a bit, lately I've been using eBays feedback pages to contact buyers of some of the confirmed fakes sold by the Gallery on Baum, alerting them to the nature of their purchases. These buyers were alarmed, generally, but thanked me and contacted Gallery on Baum for refunds, which were immediately given with no questions asked.

Just for fun, I thought I'd send a similar message to the "buyer" of the Bushmiller fake, knowing that I was probably writing to the Gallery on Baum themselves. One of the best pieces of evidence that this buyer was also the seller is that this same buyer recently purchased a "Spy vs. Spy" rough sketch which, shortly afterwards, ended up on sale in GoB's listings. So anyway, well aware that I was wading into unfriendly waters, I sent my message:

I just thought you should know that the Ernie Bushmiller drawing you recently purchased from Gallery on Baum is a forgery. Please see here:
[link]
You may wish to Google "Gallery on Baum" and "fake" to learn a lot more. I'm not saying they make the forgeries themselves, but a large number of the drawings they sell are fakes. I'm an expert on Ernie Bushmiller's work, and I can assure you that he did not draw that picture.

Now like I said, I've contacted several people who have purchased fakes from the GoB, and they've all gotten refunds, so Tony Greco must be pretty angry at me these days, so I was hardly surprised by the fury in the response from the fake buyer of the fake Bushmiller:

First, after I had received the Sluggo piece, I was pleasantly surprised that it was in better condition than I'd anticipated.

Then, after receiving your email I decided to do my own research. I showed it to two of my own experts in the field and both confirmed it was definitely authentic. I value their opinion much more than yours. First because each of them actually closely examined the piece in person. Secondly, these are two gentlemen, residing in Palm Beach, FL. who, in the past 25 years of authenticating as well as purchasing several pieces of art through auctions on my behalf, have never steered me wrong.

I then researched Greco and found he has many different interests and also has appeared on various shows highlighting his numerous collections. You do not speak of any of these positive aspects of Greco and his Gallery, only negative remarks based solely on your opinion. He must have some credibility knowing Heffner [sic] so well and frequenting the Playboy Mansion.

I also discovered he has a very large Munster collection. I don’t understand why one would jeopardize their gallery, reputation, and collections by selling inexpensive “fake” artwork. I've come across many forgeries in my lifetime, but on a much larger scale.

I then read through your blog. This confirmed that you speak negatively regarding mostly everyone. Making fun of how people dress? Not very positive and a bit insecure on your behalf I might add.

I should report you to EBay for contacting me and making false accusations without substantial evidence other than your self-proclaimed expertise, as well as causing an added expense on my behalf in authenticating the item.

After I stopped rolling around on the floor in fits of laughter, I simply responded:

Well then, I'm glad you're happy with your purchase.

Ha ha ha. In the immortal words of Bugs Bunny, ain't I a stinker?