Nancy and the Queer Adorable in the Serial Comics Form

This paper presents in dialogue two iterations of the Nancy comics by original creator Ernie Bushmiller and the later poet and illustrator Joe Brainard. Arguing for a generative consideration of these seemingly disparate renditions on a continuum, this paper addresses the ongoing seriality of Nancy as offering a complex, queer adorability that destabilizes modes of identification in the Nancy comics and beyond. Both Brainard and Bushmiller's Nancy texts draw upon the controlled miniature and the individual scene, as well as the unwieldy, additive catalogue that are characteristic of the long-running, serial comics form. These iterations of Nancy, as queer texts that oscillate between popular iconographies, provide resistance to expectations for narrative closure, static character performance, and bound space in relation to twentieth century American, collective identities.
Respondent: Chase Gregory
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