Bill Griffith to Tell the Life Story of Ernie Bushmiller in ‘Three Rocks’

Bill Griffith, creator of the long-running Zippy comic strip, takes a fellow cartoonist and the history of comic strips themselves as his subject in Three Rocks: The Story of Ernie Bushmiller: The Man Who Created Nancy, to be published by Abrams in August 2023. Nancy began running in 1933, and by the time Bushmiller died, in 1982, it was carried by almost 900 newspapers; the strip continued after his death and was taken over in 2018 by the current creator, Olivia Jaimes (see “‘Nancy: A Comic Collection’”). Griffith’s story will start with the invention of newspaper comics in 1895 and tell the story of the medium as well as the practitioner. Three Rocks will be released on August 29, 2023, as a 272-page hardcover with an MSRP of $24.99.

Griffith, a veteran of the underground comix movement, will be inducted into the Eisner Hall of Fame in July (see “Eisner Hall of Fame”), and that same month, Fantagraphics will publish his tribute to his late wife, cartoonist Diane Noomin (see “Coming from Fantagraphics in July”). Abrams published his previous graphic novel, Nobody’s Fool: The Life and Times of Schlitzie the Pinhead, in 2019 (see “Bill Griffith”).