House vs hurricane biography of nancy

Nancy Burton has published under many names in her career–Panzika, Nancy Kalish, and most famously, “Hurricane Nancy.” Burton’s comic Gentle’s Tripout, which she signed Panzika, began appearing in The East Village Other in 1965. She would go onto contribute to It Ain’t Me, Babe in 1970, which was included in Fantagraphics’ recent collection of Wimmen’s Comix, but she stopped making art in the early 1971. In recent years Burton has returned to making comics and she launched a YouTube channel where she regularly posts her artwork.

I was able to reach out to Burton earlier this year when she contributed to The Oral History of Wimmen’s Comix and afterwards she was kind enough to consent to a longer interview to talk about her work and her journey.

I know almost nothing about you so I wondered if it might be possible just to talk a little about your life and your background.

I grew up in a leftist family; we lived in Far Rockaway, Queens, New York City. The last stop on the A train! I learned early about marching and picket lines with my union dad. As I grew up I got involved in the Protest movements; I marched on Washington, protested against the Vietnam War and for Integration.

I loved classical music, folk, and went to every Alan Fried concert I could get to. Chuck Berry was my favorite. I fell in love with Elvis, too. Hail Hail Rock & Roll!

I daydreamed my way through school, doodling all the time. My leftist mom’s plans for me included becoming a teacher and marrying a doctor. Go figure! Instead I married a poet and we backpacked through Europe. Somehow we managed to cross the borders into some of the communist countries; that ended any romance with the far left.

When did you travel through Europe? What countries changed your politics?

I traveled in, I think, 1963 and 1964 to Italy, France, Germany, Holland, Denmark, Hungary, Spain and Morocco. In Hamburg, Germany I worked in a pudding factory alongside migrant

Interviews

Alex Dueben | July 23, 2024

I first talked with Nancy Burton – aka Panzika, aka Nancy Kalish, aka Hurricane Nancy – years ago when I was assembling An Oral History of Wimmen's Comixand we stayed in loose contact afterwards. During the process of talking to people, I was inevitably asked who else I had interviewed and heard repeatedly, “You talked to Hurricane Nancy? What’s she like?” Though at the time, we had only had a single phone call and hadn’t gotten to know each other especially well.

By her own account Nancy never socialized with other cartoonists, and the only one she knew at all was the late Trina Robbins, who reached out to Nancy at the end of her art career asking her to contribute to It Ain’t Me, Babe. Nancy stopped cartooning and making art altogether in 1970 and just why that happened is one of the things we talk about in the long conversation that’s included in the new book, Hurricane Nancy.

In organizing and editing the book, I kept thinking about how much of Nancy’s personality comes through in her artwork. She has a playful, bemused sensibility about life that’s in all her work, from her earliest comics to her most recent pieces. Nancy donated her original artwork to the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum a few years ago and now with the book out, people will be able to see her work and hopefully get a glimpse of who she is and where her art stands in the history and evolution of underground comix.

As the book began with an interview here at The Comics Journal, the editors asked for a short piece about Nancy’s influences, which are eclectic and not obvious, but I think they make perfect sense. What follows is an edited version of our recent conversation.

The Sunday Comics

I used to go to my friend Angela’s house. In my house we only read the New York Times, which didn’t have comics. Plus her mother was a wonderful cook. I would read

I met Nancy at the Hamilton SPCA, but that was not the start of her story.

Nancy was born somewhere in New Orleans, Louisiana, sometime before or after Hurricane Katrina. She picked up and sent to a shelter North West of the city, only to be rescued again by The Boudreaux Animal Rescue Krew (BARK). To make matters worse, she was pregnant and way too skinny. After having her puppies she was a very tiny 13 lbs – less than half her current healthy weight.

Nancy wasn’t done travelling yet though. As you can imagine, there wasn’t a lot of demand for abandoned dogs in the area after such a bad hurricane, so they started transporting their dogs up to Canada where there were a lot of happy homes waiting for furry friends. As it turns out, mine was one of them.

Category 5 Pacific typhoon

Super Typhoon Nancy, also known as the 2nd Muroto Typhoon (第二室戸台風, Daini-muroto Taifū), was an extremely powerful tropical cyclone of the 1961 Pacific typhoon season and one of the most intense tropical cyclones on record. The system possibly had the strongest winds ever measured in a tropical cyclone, with 345 km/h (215 mph) winds, tied with Hurricane Patricia of 2015. Nancy caused extensive damage, as well as at least 202 deaths and nearly 5,000 injuries in Japan and elsewhere, in September 1961.

Meteorological history

A tropical depression formed from a low-pressure area near Kwajalein Atoll on September 7. It strengthened rapidly; by the time position fixes could be taken, Nancy was nearly a super typhoon, on September 8. Moving gradually westward, Nancy explosively deepened and reached wind speeds equivalent to a Category 5 super typhoon (Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Scale) on September 9. It would maintain that intensity for the next several days.

Shortly after reaching peak intensity, Nancy approached the Ryūkyū Islands and began turning. It passed near Okinawa and over Naze. The ridge steering Nancy broke down, and the typhoon turned sharply and headed towards Japan. Nancy made landfall as a strong typhoon on September 16 as it passed directly over Cape Muroto. Nancy made a second landfall on Honshū near Osaka. The typhoon rapidly traveled up the length of the island as it continued accelerating, eventually reaching a forward speed of 65 mph (105 km/h; 56 kn). The typhoon quickly crossed over Hokkaidō before entering the Sea of Okhotsk as a tropical storm. Nancy went extratropical on September 17. The extratropical system eventually crossed over Kamchatka and entered the open ocean.

Impact