Every so often, I get an e-mail from someone who has read and enjoyed this blog during its heyday. Though I consider Stanley Stories a done deal, I have done an occasional "post-mortem post."

These include material I've recently discovered, or oversights that really ought to be added, the better to make this site an exhaustive reference of the work of John Stanley.

Longtime reader B. Baker wrote recently, and requested that this second and last Nancy and Sluggo summer camp special be posted. It's still summer, so the time seems right.

I've written much about Stanley's Nancy comics elsewhere on this blog. As well, the 1950s and 1960s volumes of my illustrated Stanley comicography (available HERE and HERE on amazon.com) offer basic information on Stanley's creative involvement in this series.

This second 84-page graphic novelette is the lesser of the two Nancy annuals. The 1960 annual is one of Stanley's most satisfying, cohesive longer works. It's arguably the finest of his Nancy run--tense, edgy and amusing, with constant status shifts.

Stanley sleepwalks through much of Nancy, with refreshing pauses when newly-created secondary characters pique his interest. The series' humor is hard-edged and not always appealing. Character relationships are often brutal and loveless. Nancy and her Aunt Fritzi, for example, appear to barely tolerate each other's presence. Their existence together seems the result of an unspoken, half-hearted truce.

Ernie Bushmiller's original template is also troublesome, in this regard. In the Bushmiller world, events occur in one-gag increments. Fritzi's impatience with Nancy was a constant source of quick-laff set-ups. Perhaps Stanley chose to follow that, no questions asked, as it was one of the popular comic strip's backbones. That we see longer sequences, in which Nancy and Fritzi bicker, taunt and belittle each other, brings the laffs to a screeching halt. In these moments, Nancy threatens to become Edward Albee's Comics and Stories.

Sluggo is the character that most sparks Stanley the writer. As a student of social status, with a soft spot for life's underdogs, Sluggo seems to speak to Stanley. He is the lowest of his many low-status figures. He is not self-absorbed or full of hot air, like Little Lulu's Tubby. Nor is he zany and free-wheeling, as in Stanley's version of Woody Woodpecker.

Sluggo seems numbed, resigned to his fate and unable to change anything in his life. He is befriended by Nancy, and other kids, but shares none of their daily comforts. He is, on one hand, a child's fantasy of independence. No parental figures overshadow Sluggo. His next-door neighbors, the McOnions, are negative-image parents. They take some interest in Sluggo's well-being, but any benevolence is shattered by husband Bunion "Bunny" McOnion's schizophrenic mood-swings.

Freedom's price-tag is that Sluggo lives a life of flux. Nothing is certain, nothing stays the same for long, and his well-being/sense of self is in a perpetual state of challenge. It's a good life if you don't weaken!

Mr. McOnion is the most constant figure of threat and doom in Sluggo's life. In the first Nancy annual, Stanley makes his most memorable use of this twisted relationship. The re-match seems redundant here, but its less terrifying turnout suggests that someone might have mentioned to Stanley that he overdid the darkness in that first annual.

Whatever the case, this is still an amusing, if spotty, comic book. Good moments outweigh the bad, and as with the first annual, there seems a spark of life and interest in its contents. Here's the entire book, minus activity pages. Enjoy...

As is evident from even a quick reading, John Stanley was a bit burned out on Little Lulu in 1959. He had every right to be. Fifteen years of steady work on the series (including the companion title, Tubby) had yielded some 7,270 pages of comics--at least 700 of those also illustrated by him.

Lulu was continued by others, who followed Stanley's example to the letter, but without a vestige of the soul formerly present in the characters.

Someone at Western Publications had the brilliant idea that John Stanley should continue writing stories about kids, based on licensed properties. Having wrested rights to United Feature Syndicate's characters from UFS itself, Dell published a plethora of comics with the characters from Nancy, Peanuts and Captain and the Kids.

They ignored Gus Arriola's Gordo, which might have made a successful comic book transplantation, and apparently avoided Al Capp's Li'l Abner, which was a wise move.

Nancy, as I've written here before, is really just Little Lulu sideways. One can sense John Stanley's frustration in still being asked to churn out stories about kids and the suburbs. A certain anger rises from the base of these stories. This anger breeds a brittle, edgy comedy, often laced with dark impulses, and peppered with open hostility from its adult characters to its children.

On the other hand, Nancy gave Stanley a complete break from the heavy rules and regulations of Little Lulu. Though he was too careworn to run wild with this new property, he did approach it with a certain venomous vigor.

As promised, here is the conclusion of the 1960 Nancy and Sluggo Summer Camp shebang.

"The Dinner Belle" contrasts two schools of cognitive biases towards food: the anti-anorexia of Eadie and the smug entitlement of Camp directory Simply.

John Stanley, like Little Orphan Annie's Harold Gray, tended to give supporting characters Dickensian names--ones that sum up their shortcomings or hang-ups. In Simply's case, his smug, naive expectations fully justify this type-naming.
Everything in this rambling book comes to a head in "Lost in the Woods." All storylines intersect, and McOnion gets a terrifying-yet-appropos comeuppance.

Also like Harold Gray, John Stanley was a strong believer in comics karma. Gray's comeuppances are usually of a brutal nature. Stanley's threaten their characters, but never result in death or serious injury. Mind-fudgery and status demotion are typical results of Stanley's comic karma.



"Lost in the Woods" is by far the liveliest, most genuine sequence in this narrative. Stanley weaves together the book's various threads into a colorful, amusing fabric.

Moments of strong physical/verbal comedy include McOnion's Page-O'-Terror (the larger one here) and Nancy's mistaking of the wild bear's "GRRRRLLLLS" for an echo of her panic-stricken cry to her peers.

Also impressive is how Oona and her world is suddenly whipped into the formula. We're glad to see Sluggo reach Camp Fafamama intact, tho' too late in the game to achieve anything more than arrival.

Stanley would do far better in the second and last Nancy & Sluggo special, which I'll run here sometime.

Stanley brings this narrative to a rousing close with a finale that anticipates the over-reaching anarchy of It's A Mad, Mad, Mad World, while also suggesting the madcap quality of Frank Tashlin's or Jacques Tati's movies. Rollo Haveall is the stimulus of "The Tiger Hunt."


Rollo's need for/contempt for his protector-slave Keggly is darkly amusing. I find especially funny Rollo's move into Keggly's shirt.

The energy level surges in "The Tiger Hunt," after maintaining too much of an even keel in earlier pages. It's a welcome shot-in-the-arm, and shows Stanley finally investing something of value into this rambling piece.

After a rare and striking full-page panel, this story resolves on an almost-heart-warming note, with the emotional reformation of McOnion. He still has it in himself to send Sluggo one psycho post-card, and this event gives the book's finale a slight kicker of anxiety. (So does the last-panel Pledge to Parents!)

Inside-cover gag page, anyone?


My feeling about this book, overall, is a qualified Meh. It has its moments, and contains some striking anticipations of Stanley's more assured, solid 1960s comedy style. It feels a bit dashed-off, and shows the clear limitations of the "Nancy" cast, in Stanley's estimation. Nancy is a cipher--brilliantly manipulated in Ernie Bushmiller's comics world, but not a strong narrative leader. She exists as a foil for Bushmiller's factory-fresh gag machine, and nothing more.

Only when Stanley works with his creations--McOnion, Oona, and Tweak--does this narrative reach out and grab us. As Rob Clough notes in his recent review of the first Drawn + Quarterly Tubby book:

[b]y nature, Stanley was a world-builder; he felt the need to introduce various comic foils, friends and antagonists for his central characters.  Part of that, I would guess, was Stanley’s way of giving himself raw material to work with; it’s his way of coming up with the variables for his comics writing formulas.

Stanley's Little Lulu casts a long shadow over his Nancy work. If I seem overly hard on this material, it's because it is regressive. Stanley did not grow as a writer with his time on Nancy. He reached into his recent past, and recycled formulas that had grown thin in Lulu's late issues. Though competent, and sometimes inspired, it lays listlessly next to Dunc 'n' Loo or his finest moments in Thirteen Going on Eighteen.

Half-strength Stanley is still far superior to most contemporary comics creators' efforts. Even when dialed down, Stanley couldn't help writing quality material. We remember McOnion's freaky pursuit of Sluggo, and the vagaries of Oona's mystical world. Other Stanley Nancy add-ons of note include the inept house-burglar, Bill Bungle (another Gray-hued name!) and Oona's self-obsessed miniature magician Uncle Eek.

I promise to be more enthusiastic in my next post, whatever it may be...

Hi gang... well, since I had scans of this entire 36-page funnybook, I thought I'd post some more excerpts. I don't want to take away from the impact of Drawn & Quarterly's upcoming reprint of the Stanley Nancy series, so I'll lay low on this-type material in future...

If you're reading this in Australia, New Zealand, or in neighbouring parts, it's practically summertime where you are. Perhaps these stories will seem more apt.

This "Four Color" issue is an anomaly. It comes well into Stanley's run on the regular NANCY title. Stanley had already created a magnificent 100-page LITTLE LULU summer camp special, two years prior.

In that milestone issue, Stanley pioneered a lovely longform style of storytelling, in which a score (or so) of short stories all weave into a cohesive, flowing book-length narrative.

When reading Dan Clowes' Ice Haven, I was reminded of Stanley's summer camp comics. Clowes took the concept one step further, by transmuting the narrative 'pearls' into a variety of genre comics styles. All this flash and dazzle would seem empty, were these devices not driving the story Clowes wished to tell.

This story form would reach its apex with the pair of 84-page Nancy & Sluggo Summer Camp specials published in August 1960 and '61. Stanley would return to it, in a more subtle usage, in the Thirteen Going on Eighteen series a few years later.

Back to this material...my guess is that Dell wanted to test the sales waters and see if the Nancy material would sell when blended with the summer camp genre. The answer, an obvious 'yes,' gave birth to those magnificent twin Dell Giants.

In the first story featured here, "Off To Camp," Stanley introduces one of Nancy & Sluggo's key supporting figures, the suburban Jekyll and Hyde, Mr. McOnion. Note that he's drawn as a bland, button-nosed layabout here.

This is an excerpt from the next NANCY camp giant, in which we see McOnion at his most typical--a deadpan psychopath stalking a terrified Sluggo in a helpless world:
Stanley had yet to develop McOnion's sinister side, although he is as clearly vexed, as Sluggo's neighbor, as he would be in later episodes.

The genuinely creepy relationship between Sluggo and McOnion is of a piece with the more disturbing aspects of Cold War mass media. Gloom and doom figured prominently in popular entertainment, as it had during the two World Wars.

In the shadow of H-bomb armageddon, pop culture got darker than our nostalgia would like it to be. Stanley's comix writing was a prime force in this pitch-black era.

Things are considerably lighter in tone here. These three stories are in sequence, and provide the basic set-up for a summer camp comic book. "Off To Camp" sets up the formula: underprivileged Sluggo can't go to camp...or so he thinks.

In "Camp Fafomama," Sluggo must endure much physical and mental battery to attain his place in the sun.

Finally, for a moment in "The Bank Holdup," stagestruck Sluggo undergoes some sort of self-hypnosis to attain a higher status.

Just think...one day soon, you'll be able to enjoy these stories in a lovely Drawn & Quarterly-published volume! For now, here they are for your computer screen...