The Best of Little Nemo in Slumber Land

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Summary: Wow!
Review: Each (color!)strip is so beautifully mesmerizing. Its the perfect example of what can be accomplished in the comic industry. Windsor McCay was a genius!

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Summary: This book is a must have for all cartoonists!!!!!
Review: This book is an absolute treasure. Every cartoonist should buy and study this book with a magnifying glass for a few hours a week. Winsor McCay is maybe the most dedicated, hard-working cartoonist to date. He was certainly before his time, and he has still carries more weight than most artists of today. His strips are lavish and generous. You can believe that I will be studying this book for years to come.

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Summary: The very best of Winsor McCay's Little Nemo Comic Strips
Review: Winsor McCay's "Little Nemo in Slumberland" is a rare combination of artistry and imagination that deserves to be considered the first classic comic strip. "The Yellow Kid" came first, but it never demonstrated the superb craftsmanship of McCay's work, which is done in a distinctive "art nouveau" style that presages the coming of surrealism. Within the frames of his story McCay was able to create illusions of vast size and space, showing a word that was remarkably futuristic. Each of Little Nemo's weekly adventures told of a dream of the tousle-haired boy (of about six?) and concluded with him falling out of bed or waking up. McCay's son Robert served as the model for Nemo. Before working on the Slumberland strips McCay had experimented with other comics including "Little Sammy Sneeze," "Hungry Henriette," "Poor Jake," "Tales of Jungle Imps," and "Dream of the Rarebit Fiend" (the last one under the pseudonym Silas), but none of them even hinted at the splendor of "Little Nemo." In 1909 McCay would go on to create "Gertie the Dinosaur," the first commercially successful animated cartoon, which is probably how most people know of McCay's work. But that can only be because they have yet to be exposed to this comic strip.

The 200 "Little Nemo in Slumberland" comic strips in this book originally appeared in the "New York Herald" Sunday color supplement from 1905 to 1914 and are faithfully reproduced in their original colors from rare, vintage file-copy pages in the hands of a few choice collectors. We follow Little Nemo as he first enters Slumberland and learns to cope with his unpredictable flying bed, pursues the beautiful Princess of Slumber, searches for the castle of King Morpheus, and endures the ministrations of Dr. Pill. Nemo also meets up with the devilish Flip, a green-faced clown in a plug hat and ermine collared jacket, who starts off always trying to summon the Dawn and wake Nemo from his dreams but then becomes our little heroes boon companion in his Slumberland adventures which involved an impressive array of strange giants, beautiful mermaids, humongous elephants, mysterious space creatures, exotic parades, fantastic dirigible rides, a jolly green dragon, and anything else McCay could imagine.

By both artistic and historical standards "Little Nemo in Slumberland" is the first truly great comic strip. When you look at the great strips that followed, such as George Herriman's "Krazy Kat," George McManus' "Bringing Up Father," Bud Fisher's "Mutt and Jeff," and Frank King's "Gasoline Alley," they are all decidedly different from what McCay was doing, although the use of "art nouveau" interiors and zany byplay by McManus is clearly an homage to "Little Nemo" as far as I am concerned. There is a sense in which those who see nothing similar appearing on the funny pages until Bill Watterson's "Calvin and Hobbes" have a point, although I would acknowledge Snoopy's imaginative life in "Peanuts" as well. It is therefore totally appropriate that Watterson and Schultz are both among the artists (along with Maurice Sendak, Ron Goulart, Chuck Jones, and Art Spiegelman) who write essays exploring the genius of McCay's work. There has never been a more magical comic strip. Never.