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Today the Google Doodle is a tribute to the comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland, by the artist Winsor McCay, which ran in American newspapers from 1905-1914. Each night the hero of the strip, Little Nemo, would fall asleep in his bed and embark on adventures in Slumberland, sometimes continuing from the night before. Each strip would end with Nemo falling out of his bed and waking up. In those days strips were often given a full newspaper page, and McCay used this to full extent, varying the size of the panels and employing great architectural detail in creating vast fantastical locations. Google's tribute uses the imagery of McCay to show a typical Nemo adventure. The excerpt I posted above from the Google Doodle pays tribute to The Walking Bed (1908), where Nemo's bed grew legs and walked through the city. Read more in this Comic Riffs blog post.
Little Nemo is inspired stuff. I also love the 'Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend' by Winsor McCay.
ReplyDeleteDid you ever see his animated movies? I only saw them once, years ago, at some film festival. They were silent cartoons with all sorts of great insanity in them; highly reccomended.
Yes, the Rarebit Fiend is great. For those who don't know, each strip features an adult eating a rich meal (e.g., rarebit), falling asleep and having a nightmare often inspired by modern living.
DeleteI have a DVD compilation of the McCay shorts (Gertie the Dinosaur, etc). McCacy drew each of the thousands of frames by hand!
They ran some of his animated movies on PBS with their overnight filler program called Classic Arts Showcase several years ago.
ReplyDeleteZen, I wish to Hell you would turn off the stupid Bot protector on your comments.
ReplyDeleteOk, I've turned off word verification ("captcha") but left in the requirement for an account when posting (so no anonymous posting). I didn't realize these were two separate options. I myself have noticed when commenting on other blogs that the captcha has gotten much more onerous. I'll leave it off unless I start getting a lot of spam now.
DeleteI was very pleased to see Google's tribute to the father of the comic strip, and because of it I learned something I didn't know: that McCay's first name was actually Zenas. Zenas McCay. That's a Call of Cthulhu character name right there.
ReplyDeleteAnd the name is Zenas is strangely similar to Zenopus...
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