Little Nemo by Winsor McCay

Reading Little Nemo by Winsor McCay was an interesting experience to be sure. I had heard about the works of Winsor McCay from the history of Illustration class last spring and I wanted to take the chance to actually look at his work this time. It was much different then the only other version of Nemo I had seen, the movie created a few years ago. That was a mess of idea's even if the animation was beautiful and smooth. Where that lacked any sort of sense, the strip is confined to a single page giving you the same beginning and end of Nemo sleep and then waking up.

Unlike other comic strips of the time, Little Nemo uses the entire page to tell its story and cannot be arranged any other way. Too many of the panels are irregularly shaped to make it work. Krazy Kat could be placed vertically or horizontally and still make sense. Depending on which Walt and Skeezix piece you were looking at, the strip or the sunday special, depending if you could do the same thing. I assume this was one of the reasons that all of these older comics were numbered. The only other I can think of was so the reader knew in which order to view the comics. In Little Nemo's case the second one makes more sense because of its irregular shaped panels might confuse the reader back in the day. I think even today if the panels weren't labeled even I would have some trouble.

While some of the wording didn't always make sense to me, due to its older language, I particularly enjoyed the main concept of Little Nemo. Exploring dreams and what they might mean. Every strip Nemo has a new dream. They don't always make sense because dreams normally never but they are entertaining to see what they could mean. What could have Nemo possibly have done to have such crazy dreams? I wonder