Bill Griffith

From Bill Griffith, creator of Zippy the Pinhead andNobodys Fool, comesThree Rocks, a biography of cartoonist Ernie Bushmiller, creator of the iconic comic stripNancy. But this graphic novel is about more than a single comic book artist.

It is the story of this American art form, tracing its inception to 1895 with theYellow Kid, the creation ofNancyin 1933, and all the strips that followed, includingPeanutsandThe Far Side. When Bushmiller died in 1982,Nancywas running in almost 900 daily newspapersa number few syndicated cartoonists ever achieve.

Nancyis hailed as the perfect comic strip by fans and cartoonists alike. The titleThree Rocksrefers to the trope of three hemispherical rocks often seen in a Bushmiller landscapejust enough to communicate environment to the reader. This distillation is exemplary of the iconic, diagrammatic look ofNancy, a comic strip about the nature of what it means to be a comic stripthe perfect avatar for Griffith to expand upon his philosophy of creating comics.