little nemo adventures in slumberland comic

McCay’s first comic didn’t work but he found success quickly enough, with Little Sammy Sneeze, before creating his two most celebrated comic strips less than a year apart, Dream of the Rarebit Fiend and Little Nemo in Slumberland.īoth of them were about nocturnal adventures. Newspapers comics were also the main attractions for publishers like James Gordon Bennett or his today most famous concurrent William Randolph Hearst at the New York Journal.

McCay was dreaming of having his own comic strip, a form of art that was in its earliest stage of development and, in consequence, where everything was possible. But it was in Telegram that he began experimenting with the comic strip form: a sequential panel called “Hubby Goes Shopping with the Usual Results” was published on December 24, 1903. He came to work for publisher James Gordon Bennett in 1903 where he was doing caricatures of officeholders. Considered a masterpiece, it shows the young Nemo atop his bed which had grown crazy long legs, and was walking among buildings.Īt this stage, creator Winsor McCay was working for the New York Herald for a few years and had already produced many illustrations and comic strips. One of the most famous Little Nemo in Slumberland comic strips today was published in July 1908. And indeed his figures do actually start to dance and skip after he has brought them to the paper with pen and ink.Little Nemo in Slumberland, New York Herald, January 7, 1906 Here the illustrator refers to himself as creator of Nemo’s dream world and is presented as “the first artist to attempt drawing pictures that will move” in the opening titles. Three years later McCay produced an animated short film titled “Little Nemo, also known as Winsor McCay, the Famous Cartoonist of the N.Y. The figures actually begin to danceĪfter more than 100 performances in New York, the show went on tour around the country. In 1908 “Little Nemo in Slumberland” premiered as the most expensive and elaborate Broadway show that had ever been produced.

They were also his most widely-circulated works, with McCay producing a total of 549 pages i during those years. Nemo’s adventures were printed over a full color page every Sunday between 19 in the New York Herald and became McCay’s best known comic series alongside “Dream of the Rarebit Friend”.

With “Little Nemo in Slumberland”, cartoonist and illustrator Winsor McCay (1836-1934) managed to create a visually impressive and extremely comprehensive work.

Little nemo adventures in slumberland comic