BILL GRIFFITH | Three Rocks: The Story of Ernie Bushmiller

From Bill Griffith, the acclaimed creator of Zippy the Pinhead, comes the story of Ernie Bushmiller and his iconic comic strip Nancy, told in an original graphic novel that recounts the history of comics and the secrets of comic book storytellingFrom Bill Griffith, creator of Zippy the Pinhead and Nobody’s Fool, comes Three Rocks, a biography of cartoonist Ernie Bushmiller, creator of the iconic comic strip Nancy. But this graphic novel is more than just the bio of a single comic book artist. It is the story of this American art form, tracing its inception in 1895 with the Yellow Kid, the creation of Nancy in 1933, and all the strips that followed, including Peanuts and The Far Side.

When Bushmiller died in 1982, Nancy was running in almost 900 daily newspapers—a number few syndicated cartoonists ever achieve—and today it is experiencing a resurgence thanks to the work of new writer/artist Olivia Jaimes.Nancy is hailed as the “perfect” comic strip by fans and cartoonists alike. The title Three Rocks refers to the trope of three hemispherical rocks often seen in a Bushmiller landscape—enough to communicate environment to the reader (two wouldn’t read properly, and four is one too many). This distillation helped contribute to the iconic, diagrammatic look of Nancy, making it a comic strip not about childhood, like Peanuts, but about the nature of what it means to be a comic strip—the perfect avatar for Griffith to expand upon his philosophy of creating comics, specifically humorous comics.