Trivia / Nancy

• Copiously Credited Creator: The last strip drawn by Guy Gilchrist had his name appear five times, three of them in the title panel alone.
• Died During Production: Went through twice in the span of a year: after Ernie Bushmiller died in 1982 he was replaced by Mark Lasky. Unfortunately, Lasky himself died less than a year later in 1983 at age 29.
• Outlived Its Creator: Outlived several artists who drew the strip: Larry Whittington (creator of Fritzi Ritz, see Stealing the Credit below), Ernie Bushmiller, Al Plastino, and Mark Lasky are all long gone.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: A 2020 storyline about Nancy competing in a robotics tournament ended abruptly to reflect the Coronavirus pandemic cancelling several sport competitions.
• Reclusive Artist:
  • The identity of Olivia Jaimes is almost entirely anonymous - while she has given a few interviews where she talked about her childhood and how she got the job, she has never given out her real name, any photos outside of one crudely drawn portrait, or any other details like her age, birthday, or even nationality.
  • Ernie Bushmiller was not much of a gadabout, either. Al Plastino, who was a ghost artist on some of the Sunday strips while Bushmiller was still alive, had this to say:
    He wasn’t social… He wanted to be left alone. That’s all. That was his privilege… He didn’t want NOBODY there to share his life… This is how reclusive he was: I wanted to visit him and let him know it. Ernie told me the next time [I] would see him he’d be in a casket.
• Recycled Script: A lot of the early strips from the Guy and Brad Gilchrist's run were recycled from the old Ernie Bushmiller strips.
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor: Guy Gilchrist abruptly left in early 2018 after allegations of sexually assaulting his former assistant came to light. The strip went into reruns for few months before new cartoonist Olivia Jaimes was hired to replace him. Gilchrist, who called the charges "patently false", has maintained an association with The Muppets.
• Stealing the Credit: For a long time, Ernie Bushmiller and his syndicate claimed that he was the one who created the character Fritzi Ritz. In reality she was created by Larry Whittington in 1922. Ernie Bushmiller didn't take over until 1925. The character Nancy, however, was created by Bushmiller.
• Throw It In!: Olivia Jaimes loves cornbread, and she had to follow Gilchrist's Grand Finale somehow, so she just wrote about Nancy "going ''in''" on it.
• Trolling Creator: After older fans of the comic continued to express outrage over Jaimes' changes in 2018, she released the infamous "Sluggo Is Lit" comic, complete with too many cellphones, and Aunt Fritzi wearing a snowsuit in retaliation to older fans who thought she should remain in skintight clothing.
• What Could Have Been: Ivan Brunetti and Gary Hallgren both applied to take over the strip after Jerry Scott stepped down.