I think she qualifies as a beauty. For a decade that was the point of her comic strip. Gilchrist slutted her up a bit, though, which was a mistake. Ernie Bushmiller defined the comic strip's greatness, and he cannot be replaced.
He would joke about the people who said they wouldn't read the comic strip because it was too simple. He rebutted that by the time you resolve not to read it, you already had.
I have a collection of Nancy strips, and was a regular reader during the Bushmiller years. One section included a portion of "How to Read Nancy". I think they are purposefully reading too much into it.
Certainly the readership at the time did not see this as a surrealist dada-ist or Dali-esque strip (despite some creative illusions and optical art). Bushmiller certainly went to extremes in his minimalism, and he was unconcerned about anachrronisms or whether Sluggo's background was Bowery Boy or Country Bumpkin. Whatever it took to deliver the joke. I think he would be amused by attempts to rationalize long-running comic strips into a consistent canon.
I think he wanted to earn a good living (check.) and give people a light chuckle for 5 seconds. That was enough for him. At the same time, he created the indelible characters of Nancy, Fritzi Ritz (Nancy-fied version), Sluggo, and Rollo the RIch Kid (Irma was a regular, but quite delible).
