This is the latest installment of "See the Meaning," which is a feature where I provide the context behind notable out-of-context comic book panels!

Today, in honor of Olivia Jaimes making her first public appearance since taking over the Nancy comic strip (it was today and it apparently went well), I thought I'd take a look at the very popular "Sluggo is Lit" meme that has been making its way through the comics world this past month.

To really understand the meme, though, you first have to know a little bit about Nancy, both the character, the comic strip and the people behind the comic strip.

Nancy originated as a comic strip about a ditzy flapper named Fritzi Ritz. It was started in 1922 by Larry Whittington. Ernie Bushmiller took over the strip in 1925. In 1933, Bushmiller introduced Fritzi's acerbic niece, Nancy. The young character soon became a dominant part of the strip. In 1938, Nancy's friend, Sluggo, was introduced, as well, and the strip was officially re-named Nancy. Bushmiller continued on the series until he died in 1982.

Bushmiller was one of the all-time greats, and his Nancy comic strips are still widely read and loved to this day. United Feature Syndicate seriously has a page on GoComics.com for just Bushmiller's old strips called Nancy Classics. Bushmiller was a big fan of offbeat humor. Just picking the first couple of strips from the Nancy Classics site from the same time that Jaimes joined the main site, you can really see Bushmiller's offbeat, often absurdist sense of humor...

Those are just really well told comic strips with excellent artwork. After Bushmiller's death, the strip went through a variety of cartoonists who tried out different styles. The most popular and the longest-lasting by far was Guy Gilchrist, who did an upbeat, gentle strip while also drawing a rather voluptuous Aunt Fritzi...

Gilchrist was big on references to other pieces of popular culture....

There was very much a sense of familiarity and calm in these strips. The sort of thing where an older reader especially could just check them out and be happy with the references designed for baby boomers mostly.

Then Jaimes took over, and she changed the sense of humor in the strip dramatically. Jaimes uses a similar TYPE of humor as Bushmiller (although obviously not precisely the same)...

She also made a point to modernize the strip. No longer was it meant to appeal to baby boomers.

There were jokes that involved headphone buds...

And a good deal of references to smart phones, the internet and stuff like that.

Although, amusingly, when I was looking at Gilchrist's strips, he did have one last year about iTunes!

Well, guess what, the older fans of the strip were NOT HAVING THIS AT ALL!

And that, in and of itself, began to effect the strip.

Page 2: [valnet-url-page page=2 paginated=0 text='Explain the meme already!']

Clearly, Jaimes has a different art style than Gilchrist does. One of these differences is that Aunt Fritzi no longer is quite so voluptuous (it also appears as though Jaimes has abandoned a plotline from late in Gilchrist's run where he had Fritzi get married). Another one is that the art just looks different period. The new art style drew some criticism (which Jaimes likely knew it would), so she soon had a bit about how the reason the art was different was that they were using a Snapchat filter on the strip...

Clever gag, but also very much the sort of thing that enraged the older readers even MORE.

The strip, meanwhile, was drawing a lot of steam. Since it launched in April of this year, the website for the strip gets roughly SEVEN TIMES the traffic that it did in the Gilchrist days. Perhaps even more. The comments section, though, continue to be filled with older readers who hate the new direction of the strip.

Well, for Labor Day of this year, Jaimes decided to poke a little fun at both her critics and herself, a bit, by doing a Labor Day strip showing glimpses of panels from future strips...

She's teasing the complaints about Fritzi's body and the amount of references to modern technology (and modern slang, like "lit," which means exciting) in the strip by going overboard in the other direction. These, of course, are just JOKE PANELS. They are not actual panels of actual Nancy comic strips.

The satire landed so well that fans of the strip soon made the first joke panel "Sluggo is lit" go viral, with people photoshopping "Sluggo is lit" into other famous comic book panels....

Okay, so that's the context!

I'm sure that there are plenty of other great examples of this sort of thing, so feel free to drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com if you have ideas for future installments of See the Meaning!