Week of 10/7/2024

This week, The Shapes will be back after these messages and I review Hurricane Nancy's self-titled archival collection!

The Shapes

Annual Anniversary Special 7-8

Sammy the Critic

Hurricane Nancy Review

Fantagraphics Underground presents one of the most overlooked archival releases yet with Hurricane Nancy collecting the oeuvre of the titular artist (aka Nancy Burton, Nancy Kalish, and Panzika) who’s considered to be the earliest female underground cartoonist and a fascinating footprint in that era.

The first half of the book covers her underground comix years from 1965-1971 starting with her comic strip “Gentles Tripout” which ran in the underground newspaper East Village Other (EVO). Possessing a flat, dreamy quality, the strips seem to draw their artistic inspiration from the art nouveau and abstract expressionism with traces of formline art. There are consistent visual stimuli throughout, but the feeling of compositional constriction due to the horizontal column format is ever-present alongside beginner artist syndrome. Writing-wise, the text feels almost secondary mostly taking up space where it isn’t needed. The most contextualization I derived from it is that it’s about a cursed woman named Vera.

Published in the EVO-run comics tabloid Gothic Blimp Works, “Busy Boxes” is where Nancy’s work truly picks up steam as she’s liberated from the daily strip format and has a full-page grid to experiment with psychedelic and formline art as dominant themes. Unlike “Gentles Trip”, there is no pretense of a coherent story beyond a woman’s trip, so wordiness is abandoned as Nancy allows the drug-addled imagery to speak for itself and flow in and out of the panel borders which progressively become mere embellishments.

Afterward, we’re presented with stand-alone illustrations and comics of similar tones further building on and establishing Nancy’s art style rife with iconography that insinuates more profound themes.

Jarringly enough, just as she’s hitting the height of her creative zenith with her contribution to the revolutionary women’s comic book anthology It Ain’t Me Babe, she disappears from the underground comix scene and the arts in general remaining out of the public eye for several decades until 2009 when started posting drawings online which she still does to this day. As explained in the 12-page interview at the end of the book, while this period marked the peak of Nancy’s artistry, it was conversely the rock bottom of her personal life due to issues like drug addiction, financial troubles, and raising a child.

When she returned to art, it was due to her breast cancer diagnosis which induced a sense of urgency to begin doing what she loved again. The book’s second half covers that period from her diagnosis to the present. For the better, the tone of Nancy’s art has changed to playfully tranquil reflecting her evolution as a person while still retaining that signature drollness and fantastical imagination.

You can buy the book at the Fantagraphics online store and follow Hurricane Nancy’s work on her Instagram page or website.

Thank you Hurricane Nancy for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

UPDATE: I realized this Hurricane Nancy review is coming in the wake of Hurricane Milton!