Nancy

Joyful, cheeky, and incredibly smart, I have loved Olivia Jaimes' work on Nancy (the first woman to write and draw the strip)- so I was pleased to see it in a collected edition. Jaimes successfully blends the old style of the original Nancy comics with a cleanness that makes it almost resemble a webcomic, and she has a real gift for intelligent jokes that exploit the medium she's working in ( recent example: a comic set in a basketball game that offers hints on reading the climax 'in slow motion'). There's also a real emotional core to Nancy, Sluggo et al– maybe not *much* of a one, but I at least can understand, for example, Nancy and Esther's mutual reluctance to admit fault when they fall out, and root for them to get back together.

All of these elements mean that the first run of Jaimes' Nancy strips reward re-reading, and this collected edition promises to be a great way of doing that.

The Nancy (and Sluggo) cartoons are classics. I don't recall when the first comic strip was published but I know that it was many years ago. Olivia Jaimes more recently took over at the Nancy desk. What a good choice she was! The comic strips in this book are modern, relevant, cheeky and yet still feel like the Nancy that readers may remember of old. If you are looking for a smile of recognition and a bit of relaxation, get this book. You will grin as you read about everything from cell phones to computers to school to...life. Enjoy.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this book in exchange for an honest review. I know that I will be leafing through it many times.

There are many comic strips out there where the original artist and writer have either died or retired, and yet they have been around such a long time that on one ones them to die.

And so it is with Nancy. Olivia Jaimes tried out to become the new illustrator, and writer.

Her strips are fresh, and funny, something Nancy has not been in a long, long time.

<img src="https://g2comm.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/nancy.png" alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-5324" />

Of course humor is fluid, so if you don't like the first few that you find, then you should move on.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

I’ve been a fan of the Nancy comics for a while, and it was nice to get some new material. The classic Nancy we know with a fun new touch.

A modern take on a classic character - perfectly and lovingly done by Olivia Jaimes. Would recommend for anyone who is a fan of classic comic strips, and will be a great addition for anyone who is into webcomics. Recommended!

This is such a cute book! It really has good cartoons with the best
of Nancy! I enjoyed it very much. I think it would make a special
gift for someone that has followed Nancy.

Thank you so much, Olivia Jaimes, the Publisher, and Netgalley for
allowing me to read this cute book!

I liked this new approach to a classic comic character. It's fun to read and well done.
Highly recommended!
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

Thanks to Olivia Jaimes, what was once a stale relic of a long-bygone era has been completely reborn. Wonderfully weird and chocked full of meta-humor, "Nancy" is more than just relevant again - it is hands-down one of the best comic strips today.

"This problem is SO EASY. What a SIMPLE assigment. The answer is OBVIOUS. If everyone wastes the next few minutes feeling discouraged, I think we can catch up."

I feel so hard for this comic! Nancy's sarcastic humor is the best! Olivia Jaimes did a wonderful job with this iconic character, and I couldn't get enough of the meta jokes.

This the first I really read any Nancy so I can't make a comparison to it's older versions but I found it entertaining! The graphics style is cute and the humour is snappy, modern and clever.

I’ve never read any of the classic Nancy comics, but her look is iconic. I feel like I could identify a Nancy comic from across the room by the shape of Nancy’s head alone. The fact that those comics were ubiquitous enough to become iconic but passé enough that I’d never read any of them is a fascinating contradiction.

Nancy is one of a handful of undead syndicated comics, kept running by a series of artists after the original artist died. It’s the sort of thing that newspapers carry by default for the sort of people who still get newspapers and read the comics section. That’s why the handoff to Olivia Jaimes was such a shock to the system; after decades of comfortable, predictable irrelevancy, Nancy was suddenly reentering the pop culture discussion and getting read and shared by young people.

One of the most interesting things about Jaimes is that she wanted to bring Nancy back to her original spirit while updating the trappings of the strip for modern times. Her predecessor had turned Nancy into a parade of cutesiness and made the strip toothless and unfunny. Jaimes’ vision of Nancy was as a stubborn little girl who is always scheming, in a strip packed full of absurd jokes that sometimes get a little meta.

The most famous Nancy image from Jaimes’ reign so far, “Sluggo is Lit“, is a meta joke about the cartoonist not wanting to do a strip and providing previews of upcoming stories, but it’s also a poke at the sort of people upset that Jaimes is updating Nancy with modern sensibilities. The only reason that anyone is talking about Nancy comics in 2019 is because Jaimes made them resonant for our times.

This collection includes strips from Jaimes’ first year of running Nancy. It has several laugh out loud moments throughout, and I find myself wanting to read more of the daily strip. There isn’t an overarching storyline to the collection. Instead, the strips are mostly just episodic hi-jinks or one-off jokes. Nancy does slowly but surely learn more about building robots in her robotics club, but that’s more about the comedic potential of Nancy building and controlling something mechanical.

If you’re looking for a good laugh from a strip that feels “relatable” without pandering, then you should definitely check out Olivia Jaimes’ Nancy.

The aptly named Nancy by Olivia Jaimes is a comic collection that covers the first nine months of Jaimes’ run on Nancy. Nows as good a time as any to tell you that NetGalley provided me with a free digital copy for reviewing purposes. It’s just as well, it saved me from having to hunt down all of the strips individually online- and boy, it did not disappoint. Within the first few pages of the comic we get a mix of both the old and new Nancy. We see Nancy going completely insane on some cornbread, sharing earbuds with Sluggo, thinking about herself, and talking about life with Sluggo (while both gaze at their phones). Nancy may have been upgraded to a new generation, but her essence is still there- even the meta artist-shaming jokes are there, with a notice that “Any questionable art from now on is because Nancy and Sluggo are using a snapchat filter”.

The storylines are simplistic and easy- we see Nancy joining Robotics club, but aside from her own created dramatics, there’s no rise and fall to the story. The strips are bite-sized and able to be digested on their own and out of order, and if it weren’t for the occasional introduction of new characters of the mention of time-relevant holidays (this is the newspaper’s funnies strip, after all) I wouldn’t have even noticed the order that the comics go in. It was easy for me to get a few strips in, get a laugh, send a strip to my fiance to tell him “look it’s you” at one of Sluggo’s misfortunes, and then go back to work.

The art in Nancy isn’t always perfect. The artist herself knows it, and pokes fun at it. But what is always in check is the humor. I found myself laughing constantly at Nancy’s well relatable despairs and hopes for her an easy and fun life. Nancy is my millenial id, seeking only the pleasure of video games during a day of school or work. She reaches the most selfish and irresponsible parts of my soul- and that’s why I love her, and why this collection made me laugh so much. From wondering if her friends angry with her for ending a text with a period, to ragging on people who brag on social media on social media, Nancy gets me. And I think that if you read it, you’ll find she gets you too. You just may have to look past the smartphones and selfie sticks and hover boards to do so.

I don’t regularly read a newspaper that currently runs Nancy, so this collection was completely new to me. It is so good to be reunited with a friend of my childhood. I will admit to finding it a bit bizarre to see her in the land of technology, but the drawing style and sense of humor are true to form. I still love her.

An excellent collection of cartoons. Olivia James has brought the classic comic strip Nancy into the 21st century. Each strip will at least make you chuckle internally and at most laugh out loud and laugh again when you think about it days, weeks and months later. A near perfect take on a simple comic suitable for children and adults.

I was never a big reader of comic books, but like most children I wanted to read the comics in the newspaper and I always read Nancy first. I think I enjoyed how real she seemed... like a girl I could know. She was just a normal kid like me. She was a bit sassy at times; she was awkward; she was imperfect. And I loved all of that about her.

I looked it up. The original strip debute in 1922. So when I read them in the 1960s and 1970s she was already middle aged. But a year ago Olivia Jaimes brought Nancy back to the page and created the same vivid girl with the same iconic look, but very modern struggles. This Nancy stays up into the wee hours playing on her phone. This Nancy is on Instagram and is worried about the number of Followers. This Nancy uses today's slang and reminds her aunt that "fresh" no longer means "rude." This Nancy even wears pants!

I am aware that some fans were disappointed, but I loved them. The comic is still about the normal life of a normal girl. It is just about a normal girl living in this decade. It is funny, a bit silly, and sometimes heartwarming. And for me, it was very nostalgic and sweet.

Nancy is a great comic for girls because it isn't often that the comic's star is a girl and even rarer that the artist is a woman.

Thank You NetGalley, Olivia Jaimes and the publisher for the digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Nancy is a very cute comic strip collection. I laughed out loud on many instances!

I would like to thank the publisher for giving me a copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. Thank you NetGalley!


My children and I both loved this ! They also enjoyed the fact that I knew of this comic as a child myself!

First compilation of the newspaper comic strip re-launched by Olivia Jaimes in 2018.

I grew up with the original run by Ernest Bushmiller; i also love to play Five Card Nancy (https://www.scottmccloud.com/4-inventions/nancy/index.html)

Jaimes has modernized the character - Nancy's in a robotics club and hates to be separately from her smart phone - while staying true to Nancy's stubbornness and surreality. I had heard good things about the reboot. It was fun, i might even try to follow it online now.

If you loved the Nancy comic strip from yesteryear, I think it's worth your time to read this new take on Nancy. She's not exactly the same as the original creation but the times are different and Olivia Jaimes seems to have a great handle on how Nancy navigates this modern world. I found Nancy a bit more edgy and the comic is occasionally too-meta but overall, I thought the author did a great job. Nancy can be sarcastic and self-centered, but she also makes you laugh at her antics.
* I received this book free of charge from NetGalley.

While I'd only seen a few of these comics shared around via social media, reading the last year or so of Olivia Jaimes' run on 'Nancy' was refreshing and funny, especially thanks to the slight updates to keep with the times.

If you loved the Nancy comic strip from yesteryear, I think it's worth your time to read this new take on Nancy. She's not exactly the same as the original creation but the times are different and Olivia Jaimes seems to have a great handle on how Nancy navigates this modern world. I found Nancy a bit more edgy and the comic is occasionally too-meta but overall, I thought the author did a great job. Nancy can be sarcastic and self-centered, but she also makes you laugh at her antics.

During all my other reading, and partially completed hobbies I like dabbling in comics and books which house entire comic strips. I get my daily dose from Instagram now, pretty much the only use I put my Instagram account to.

The original comic strip was not a regular in the newspaper we subscribed to at home, so I only have a fleeting understanding of the unique dynamics of all the characters in the narrative. This author(who is now penning the comics) has indicated her love for the original, and this book came with an interview which gave a better perspective on the inclusion of computers and robotics into the comic strip. Nancy is a pretty self-absorbed child and has few friends but has bursts of being helpful. Comic strips like these are definitely not meant to be read at a stretch since they might feel like an overload. Some of the comics were funnier than the others but definitely worth dipping into from time to time. 

I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience and my prior inclinations towards cutting out comic strips from newspapers (when I still had newspapers delivered )

I have always been a fan of Nancy. She always reminds me of my childhood. This comic strip was funny, new and very refreshing. I and my kids enjoyed every bit of it.

This comic book was so adorable. I love how Nancy is sassy and so adorable. Apparently, these comics appeared in the newspaper, but I never had the opportunity to see them as my local newspaper didn't publish them. I'm glad I get to see Nancy in book-form. Definitely recommend reading. :)

I used to love the Nancy comics as a kid and being able to read them again in this recently published comic was just wonderful. The illustrations are wonderful and the stories are always so much fun. This book will be perfect both for old fans and new readers alike.