Melvin Monster
by John Stanley

Nancy
by John Stanley Created by Ernie Bushmiller, the beloved Brillo-headed Nancy starred in her own comic book series for years, written by arguably the greatest children's comics writer of all time, John Stanley. Most famous for scripting the adventures of Marjorie Henderson Buell's Little Lulu, John Stanley is one of comics' secret geniuses. He provided a visual rough draft for all the comics he wrote and then handed off these "scripts" for someone else to render the finished art. No matter what comic he was writing, he breathed life into his characters. In Stanley's comics, Nancy is no longer a crabby cipher but a hilarious, brilliant, scheming, duplicitous, honest, and loyal little kid—a real little kid. Her adventures with her best friend, the comically destitute Sluggo, involve moneymaking schemes to afford ice-cream sodas, botched trips to the corner store for Nancy's Aunt Fritzi, and comically raucous attempts to remove loose teeth. John Stanley (1914–93) was a journeyman comics scripter in the 1950s and 1960s. He is most famous for his scripts for most of the Little Lulu comics produced by Dell, and is considered by many comics historians to be the most consistently funny and idiosyncratic writer to ever work in comics. He left comics bitterly sometime in the late 1960s, never to return.
Volume 1 collects the first Stanley stories from 1957/1958. Hardcover, 8x11, full color, 152 pages. $24.95.
Volume 2 collects another batch of Stanley stories. Hardcover, 8x11, full color, 152 pages. $29.95.
Volume 3 collects more Nancy stories by Stanley. Hardcover, 8x11, full color, 120 pages. $29.95.