"Raising Nancies"

This three-pager was inspired by my memories of old back-of-the-magazine ads I remember from years past, ads that would entice you to purchase unlikely items by mail-order. For example, before psychedelics were made illegal, anyone could order peyote buttons from a tiny ad in Esquire for spiritual enlightenment and/or for recreational use! Those days are gone, folks, but you may still be able to stock up on brine shrimp, aquatic beings that were dubbed "Sea Monkeys" for mail-order purposes. Sea Monkeys would appear to be lifeless when they arrived in the mail, but plop them into water,and bingo! They were swimming this way and that for your amusement.

Couple this with the fact that I have always, as have most of the world's cartoonists, been fascinated by that Brillo-textured hair that adorns the scalp of Ernie Busnmiller's classic character Nancy. It is unique; no other cartoon character’s coiffure comes close. One day it occurred to me that perhaps the hair existed first as a spiky, lifeless seed from which the little girl would be extruded when, like a Sea-Monkey, it was plopped into a glass of water. From that fantasy my comic strip “Raising Nancies” was, in turn, extruded.