the least ... somebody who's like, 'Nancy sucks now' ... what I imagine my greatest hater would despise most is Nancy interacting with every piece of technology using words you don't understand." Art style Bushmiller refined and simplified his drawing style over the years to create a uniquely stylized comic world. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language illustrates its entry on comic strip with a Nancy cartoon. Despite the small size of the reproduction, both the art and the gag are clear, and an eye-tracking survey once determined that Nancy was so conspicuous that it was the first strip most people viewed on a newspaper comics page. In a 1988 essay, "How to Read Nancy", Mark Newgarden and Paul Karasik offered a probing analysis of Bushmiller's strip: Comics theorist Scott McCloud described the essence of Nancy: Cartoonist Wally Wood described Nancys design more succinctly: "By the time you decided not to read it, you already had." Characters Primary characters Nancy Ritz, a typical and somewhat mischievous eight-year-old girl. She encourages her friend Sluggo to improve himself and is instantly jealous of any other girls who pay attention to him. During Gilchrist's run, she was portrayed as living in Three Rocks, Tennessee (a suburb of Nashville) although her home town was unspecified by other artists. Bushmiller located her home as 220 Oak Street next to Elm Avenue. She attends Central Elementary School in the Jaimes version. Aside from creating Nancy as Fritzi's niece, Bushmiller claimed to know nothing about her lineage, adding 'Very occasionally, I get curious kids asking me, but I don't know what to tell them.' Fritzi Ritz, Nancy's paternal aunt, with whom she lives. When Nancy initially appeared in the Fritzi Ritz comic strip, Fritzi was living with her father, George. The Fritzi character was gradually phased out in the mid-1980s before being dropped entirely by the end of the decade but returned as a main character in 1995 when the strip was taken over by brothers Brad and Guy Gilchrist. In the current version of Nancy, Fritzi acts as Nancy's full-time carer. Sluggo Smith, Nancy's best friend, introduced in 1938. Sluggo is Nancy's age and is a poor ragamuffin-type from the wrong side of the tracks. He is sometimes described as Nancy's boyfriend. He is portrayed as lazy, and his favourite pastime seems to be napping; in 1976 Bushmiller told a reporter who asked how