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Day #123: The Gang Visits the Upside Down

"Little Nemo in Slumberland" dated February 16, 1908:


Transcript of Tweets by @LittleNEmo1905; Guest Curated by @Totter87 (SEPTEMBER 27, 2020):


Chris Totten here again (@Totter87) and I’ll be your #GuestCurator for the final time today as Nemo and his friends encounter one of Befuddle Hall’s most iconic befuddlements! - 1/30


If you missed my thread a few days ago introducing myself and the Befuddle Hall arc, you can check that out here: https://twitter.com/LittleNemo1905/status/1308764724264402949 - 2/30


This comic features a return to the spatial and visual hijinks of Befuddle Hall (thank goodness) by having our heroes emerge from a door that they think will be their way out, except… they emerge in an upside-down room! - 3/30


Not just any upside-down room either, a giant barrel-vaulted dining hall where the ceiling/floor (where any other doors would be) is many meters away! - 4/30


I find this to be a really excellent subversion of McCay’s usual use of Burnham-esque Beaux Arts architecture. In many instances it is used in the comics as a sort of visual climax: Nemo’s (and the reader’s) reward for exploring places like Slumberland or Jack Frost’s palace. - 5/30


But here what would otherwise be a magnificent set piece (featuring some of McCay’s most richly detailed architecture, which the characters for once get up close and personal with) is used against our heroes. They’re trapped! - 6/30


I’m also wondering if this is why the layout of the comic is nothing special. In past instances like these, we would get a large panel (or several panels) giving us a wider view of the space, but here he’s using a very average-for-the-time 9 panel layout. - 7/30


The story here is nothing major, but you could call it an “action scene.” To our 2020 eyes this may not translate as easily since there is no use of filmic composition which would give us a sense of the stakes in this scene. - 8/30


I think that it’s worth nothing that from frame 5 onward, there is a really excellent sense of weight and tension in the characters’ posing: the frames mostly show Nemo’s ascent with Flip having already climbed and Impy waiting to climb in each frame. - 9/30


Flip is, in a weird way, becoming a stabilizing force in Slumberland for Nemo, where he was a source of chaos early on so his helping Nemo climb in this comic shows rather subtle but wonderful character development. - 10/30


Nemo and Impy serve interesting roles here in showing the motion of the climb. As I said, Nemo’s climb is the subject matter of the strips, with Nemo being the one actively hanging in a precarious way in each frame. Impy, meanwhile, waits calmly on nail-bitingly narrow architectural details. - 11/30


Lacking animation, the characters are showing us the stages of the climb. Flip shows us the goal for each stage, Nemo shows us how the climb is taken, and Impy shows us where the stages are starting from. - 12/30


Sometimes these sequences function back-to-back, as between frames 4 and 5, and 5 and 6 where Impy is in the spot Flip occupied in the previous panel. But it’s also a useful visual indicator when McCay jumps ahead in time, as between frames 6 and 7. - 13/30


This strip, while not interesting in layout, is a marvel of sequential art, the mastery of which was so vital for the evolution of Animation. Time jump aside, this could be a pretty effective storyboard for a climbing sequence. - 14/30


As you may have guessed, part of the reason that someone like me, a game designer and academic, chose these particular strips was that they inspired elements of Capcom’s Nintendo Entertainment System game, "Little Nemo the Dream Master". - 15/30


I mentioned this game in my previous threads, but let’s focus on it more closely now as I think (as a design scholar) that studying media based on Nemo is a good way to explore the transactional relationships at the core of this project. - 16/30


The connection between that game and this comic in particular is the 7th level, Topsy-Turvy, which takes place entirely in an upside down hall much like the one in this comic: - 17/30


The game came out in 1990, coinciding with the Japanese release of the film "Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland" (which absolutely deserves its own series of threads) and another game, titled simply “Nemo”, which you can see art and images of on this promotional page. - 18/30


The arcade game closely follows the plot of the movie through a series of beat-em-up style stages where Nemo and Flip (players 1 and 2) fight off enemies. The NES game, however, takes its own path, only lightly touching on elements from the film. - 19/30


This is during a period where lots of American properties were being translated by Japanese game companies including Capcom’s work with Disney (Ducktales, Chip n’ Dale Rescue Rangers, Darkwing Duck) and Konami’s many licensed beat-em-ups (Ninja Turtles, The Simpsons, X-Men.) - 20/30


Communication between the game studios and the production companies making the source material was notoriously light, with Konami famously befuddled by the mere concept of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (though turning out several amazing TMNT games). This sometimes resulted in the game makers taking wonderful deep dives. - 21/30


Which I think is what you see with the Nemo NES game. The game at once references tons of material from McCay himself (the mushroom forest, Slumberland’s gardens, the upside-down hall) but mostly fails utterly to capture the spirit of these scenes (the mushroom forest is merely a backdrop, for example.) - 22/30


The game is itself a mish-mash of ideas. The core mechanic seems to be that Nemo enlists the help of animal friends, who he tames with candy and then either rides or wears as a suit (?!?!?!?!). The other core is that Nemo must collect 6 keys in ever level to unlock the level exit. - 23/30


That is of course when these core ideas are followed. The game, level by level, either leans heavily on the format of exploring for keys with animal powers or drops it entirely. One level is a very straightforward Mario-style stage that gives you all 6 keys at the door. The last levels feel like an entirely different game. - 24/30


And all of this would usually be a disaster, except that we’re talking about Capcom at the height of their NES design abilities. The staff includes Tatsuya Minami, who was also the planner for the excellent Super Ghouls n’ Ghosts and Final Fight 2. The executive producer is Tokuro Fujiwara, who created many of Capcom’s early arcade hits. - 25/30


The soundtrack by Junko Tamiya also deserves attention for being among the most memorable on the platform. I sometimes listen to it while I work on the art for our game Little Nemo and the Nightmare Fiends: - 26/30 https://youtu.be/tOJETELKVSI


All of this is to say that the game is an interesting but often overlooked piece of Nemo’s transmedia legacy. Part of this is a general dismissiveness of video games (Braun only casually mentions the game in his book, Canemaker never does). - 27/30


But part of it is that the game itself is a collection of solid, yet unrefined (leftover?) game ideas that feel like they were cobbled together against a backdrop of scenes from McCay. The art is interesting as a means of seeing how game artists interpreted McCay’s characters. - 28/30


The US box artist clearly knew what they were drawing though – the famous walking bed is nowhere to be found in the game, but features prominently on the box (there are also no flying alligators in the game.) For many of my generation (including me) this was their first introduction to McCay’s world. - 29/30


That’s my reading of Little Nemo in Slumberland #123. What are your thoughts? - 30/30

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