Nancy Ritz is a character from the comic strip "Fritzi Ritz" She is the niece of the titular character.

The character of Nancy, a precocious eight-year-old, first appeared in the strip Fritzi Ritz, a comic about a professional actress and her family and friends. Larry Whittington began Fritzi Ritz in 1922, and it was taken over by Bushmiller three years later. On January 2, 1933, Bushmiller introduced Fritzi's niece, Nancy. In 1949, he was quoted as saying that he originally intended Nancy "just as an incidental character and I planned to keep her for about a week and then dump her ... But the little dickens was soon stealing the show and Bushmiller, the ingrate, was taking all the bows." Nancy became the focus of the daily strip, which was renamed for her in 1938 after Lawrence W. Hager, the editor of the Owensboro, Kentucky Inquirer-Messenger (now the Messenger-Inquirer), lobbied for the change; Sluggo Smith, Nancy's friend from the "wrong side of the tracks" had been introduced earlier that year, and the strip's popularity rose. Comics historian Don Markstein ascribed the strip's success to Bushmiller's "bold, clear art style, combined with his ability to construct a type of gag that appealed to a very broad audience."

Fritzi Ritz became a secondary character, although her solo strip continued as a Sunday-only strip, where her relationship with Phil Fumble (who'd been featured in his own Sunday topper strip since 1932) was an ongoing presence until his departure in 1968. Fritzi Ritz continued as a Sunday feature (with Nancy as a topper) until that year when it too was replaced with Nancy permanently. At its peak in the 1970s, Nancy ran in more than 880 newspapers, before falling to 79 shortly before Guy Gilchrist's departure from the strip in 2018.

*Fritzi Ritz (January 2, 1933)

*Comics on Parade #1-6, 9, 11, 13-14, 20, 25, 32, 35, 38, 41, 44, 47, 50, 53, 55, 57, 60-71, 73, 76, 80, 86, 88-89, 92, 94-96, 101-102
*Four Color #1034
*Tip Top Comics #185-187 (comic covers only)

*The 1933 comic strip in which Nancy debuted didn't have its [https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/11825/pg11825-images.html copyright renewed.]

*[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_(comic_strip) Wikipedia]
*[https://comicvine.gamespot.com/nancy/4005-18746/ ComicVine]
Category:Comic Strip Characters
Category:1933 Debuts
Category:Larry Whittington - Creator
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