Number 1156: Ritzy Fritzi Ritz

When I look back at Sunday strips like these examples of "Fritzi Ritz," it makes me nostalgic for the golden age of newspaper comics. Full pages. Good drawings. Nowadays I look at the Sunday funnies of my own local daily newspaper and need a magnifying glass to read them.

Besides some very nice Fritzi Sunday pages going back as far as the 1940s from St. John's Fritzi Ritz #49 (1956), there are a few pages of "Nancy," which looks like a standard comic book story, but is actually five pages of unrelated daily gag strips. There are also three pages of Charles Schulz's "Peanuts" from the early days. It’s always nostalgic for me to see these early strips. I started reading it in the days when the kids in the main cast were Charlie Brown and neighborhood kids Violet and Patty, Shermy and Pigpen...and when Snoopy walked on four legs.

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Number 375


Nancy and Sluggo's weird world


Frank Young at the Stanley Stories Blog has some great analysis of individual stories by John Stanley. He hasn't gotten around yet to the Oona Goosepimple stories from Nancy comics of the late '50s. I believe they were inspired by Charles Addams' cartoons in the New Yorker magazine, but after using that inspiration, Stanley went strictly on his own. This is the last example of an Oona story I have, from Nancy #178, September-October 1960. It follows the formula set by earlier stories.

I'm also including a couple more stories from the same issue that I found funny and strange in their own ways. "The Sponsor's Message" at only four pages is a sharp satire on television advertising to children.

"A Trip To the Moon," starring Nancy's pal, Sluggo, is strange when viewed in a certain light. I'm sure Stanley meant it to be his take on the then-infant space program, and Sluggo, in his own way, outsmarting the egghead rocket scientists. I think you can also take it that this parentless child, who lives on his own and by his own wits, is being manipulated by a group of men. It's kind of creepy, really, if you think about it. It's probably better just to think about it from Stanley's comic 1960 perspective, which is the way I read it when I bought it new.

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Number 335

Oona Goosepimple and the Yo-Yo scale

I just heard the good news that the John Stanley Nancy comics will be reprinted in book form. Sorry, I don't have any other details, and if you do please share them with us.

While you're waiting like I am for the book to come out, here's a great Oona Goosepimple story by Stanley from Nancy and Sluggo #177, 1960.

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