Ernie Bushmiller’s Fritzi Ritz comics are a strange mixture of the truly bizarre and completely pedestrian. Fritzi Ritz started as a comic strip about a young single flapper girl from the Jazz Age of the 1920’s, created by Larry Whittington. When Whittington left the strip, Fritzi Ritz was taken .
Ernie Bushmiller introduced the character of Phil Fumble, Fritzi’s boyfriend and funnyman. Many of these strips start with a bizarre close-up on Phil as he utters a single line as the launching pad for the rest of the strip. Looking at the pages on this post alone shows him using this technique 75% of the time!! It’s a very artificial (but extremely economical) way of getting a gag rolling.
Ernie Bushmiller later added a little girl character to the strip… Fritzi Ritz’s niece, Nancy. Eventually, Nancy and her friend Sluggo took over the strip, and those are the characters that brought long-time fame to cartoonist Ernie Bushmiller. |
These Fritzi Ritz newspaper strips were later reformatted and published in comic book form. These pager are from Fritzi Ritz Comics #3 from 1949
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