In the early issues of Nellie the Nurse comics from the 1940s, Nellie Nelson is depicted as a naive and pretty young nurse who works in a hospital. Nellie is sweetly innocent and completely oblivious of the havoc she can wreak, simply by causing heads to turn as she strolls by in her form-fitting white uniform.

Nellie's various predicaments are lightly comical rather than serious, and tend to involve romantic complications; many of them occur outside the hospital setting, when she is out on dates with her beau, Snazzy Wilks, a nice young doctor.

Nellie's best pal is fellow nurse Mary Lou, who's dating a doctor named Speedy, and her nemesis is another nurse and coworker who's her rival for Doc Snazzy's affections: sneaky, bespectacled Pamela Lang, whose various schemes against Nellie have a decided tendency to backfire.

But Nellie eventually undergoes a substantial change. By late 1950, she is being billed as "America's Red-Headed Riot," and the exaggeratedly buxom nurse's adventures are much more broadly comical than before--as are the drawings--though the cast of characters still includes the old gang: Snazzy, Speedy, Mary Lou, and Pam (now minus her spectacles).

Nellie morphs again in a revival of the comic in 1957--now she's a shapely blond with a boyfriend named Don--but she's still fending off amorous patients and doctors, and still feuding with her old rival, Pam.

But apparently all that activity takes its toll. Alas, in her 1962 Dell reincarnation, only the name's the same--Nellie's become a funny-looking featherbrain.

The initial run of Nellie comics included stories of other often befuddled beauties: Tessie the Typist, Millie the Model, Hedy De Vine, and Rusty. Nellie the Nurse stories likewise appeared in the various comic books starring those characters.

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