Nancy 南希 ナンシー

Nancy is an American comic strip, originally written and drawn by Ernie Bushmiller and distributed by United Feature Syndicate and Andrews McMeel Syndication. Its origins lie in Fritzi Ritz, a strip Bushmiller inherited from its creator Larry Whittington in 1925. After Fritzi's niece Nancy was introduced in 1933, Fritzi Ritz evolved to focus more and more on Nancy instead of Fritzi. The new strip took the old one's daily slot, while Fritzi Ritz continued as a Sunday comic, with Nancy taking the Sunday slot previously filled by Bushmiller's Phil Fumble strip beginning on October 30, 1938.

The character of Nancy, a precocious eight-year-old, first appeared in the strip Fritzi Ritz, a comic about a professional actress and her family and friends.

Larry Whittington began Fritzi Ritz in 1922 but it wasn’t during his run that Nancy made her first appearance. Fritzi Ritz was taken over by Bushmiller three years later in 1925, and on January 2, 1933, Bushmiller introduced Fritzi's niece, Nancy. In 1949, he was quoted as saying that he originally intended Nancy "just as an incidental character and I planned to keep her for about a week and then dump her ... But the little dickens was soon stealing the show and Bushmiller, the ingrate, was taking all the bows.

Nancy became the focus of the daily strip, which was renamed for her in 1938 after Lawrence W. Hager, the editor of the Owensboro, Kentucky Inquirer-Messenger (now the Messenger-Inquirer), lobbied for the change; Sluggo Smith, Nancy's friend from the "wrong side of the tracks" had been introduced earlier that year, and the strip's popularity rose. Comics historian Don Markstein ascribed the strip's success to Bushmiller's "bold, clear art style, combined with his ability to construct a type of gag that appealed to a very broad audience.

Fritzi Ritz became a secondary character, although her solo strip continued as a Sunday-only strip, where her relationship with Phil Fumble (who'd been featured in his own Sunday topper strip since 1932) was an ongoing presence until his departure in 1968. Fritzi Ritz continued as a Sunday feature (with Nancy as a topper) until that year when it too was replaced with Nancy permanently. At its peak in the 1970s, Nancy ran in more than 880 newspapers, before falling to 79 shortly before Guy Gilchrist's departure from the strip in 2018. After Bushmiller's death in 1982, the strip was produced by different writers and artists.

Nancy Ritz, a typical and somewhat mischievous eight-year-old girl. She encourages her friend Sluggo to improve himself and is instantly jealous of any other girls who pay attention to him. During Gilchrist's run, she was portrayed as living in Three Rocks, Tennessee (a suburb of Nashville) although her home town was unspecified by other artists. Bushmiller located her home as 220 Oak Street next to Elm Avenue. She attends Central Elementary School in the Jaimes version. Aside from creating Nancy as Fritzi's niece, Bushmiller claimed to know nothing about her lineage, adding 'Very occasionally, I get curious kids asking me, but I don't know what to tell them.

Sluggo Smith, Nancy's best friend, introduced in 1938. Sluggo is Nancy's age and is a poor ragamuffin-type from the wrong side of the tracks. He has sometimes been described as Nancy's boyfriend and indeed the GoComics website features an article describing Nancy and Sluggo's relationship as 'a romance for the ages.' He has often been portrayed as lazy, and his favourite pastime seems to be napping; in 1976 Bushmiller told a reporter who asked how Sluggo supported himself: "I assume he delivers groceries on Saturday, or something like that." In the Gilchrist version, Sluggo lives at 720 Drabb Street in an abandoned house he found and according to a storyline in 2013 strips, is taken care of by truck driver "uncles" Les and More, who discovered that he had lived in an orphanage; his mother died after he was born, and his father died serving his country. Sluggo's Uncle Vince is shady and his rich Aunt Maggie in California doesn't care about him because he reminds her of when she was poor. Gilchrist's Sluggo ran away from the orphanage, his cousin Chauncey gave him $200 and he took the train as far as Three Rocks. Jaimes' version of Sluggo is very different: he is thoughtful, a dedicated reader, and his living conditions are not shown. There is also very little to suggest that he is Nancy's boyfriend in the Jaimes version of the strip, although they are often seen in conversation together and Sluggo is anxious to please Nancy.

The photo series is a Fanart/ AI assisted photography project based on the popular comic strip that is still running today.