"Little Nemo in Slumberland" dated March 01, 1908:
Transcript of Tweets by @LittleNemo1905 (SEPTEMBER 29, 2020):
Well, we're inching closer to the conclusion of Befuddle Hall and, this time, we see not an upside room… not a sideways room… but a tumbling room! - 1/13
I have to commend McCay's compositional choices here… this strip could have been an incohesive disaster, but he actually does a really great job at making it simultaneously disorienting and functional. - 2/13
The motion of the room is really quite smooth (even if the columns make it feel somewhat visually confusing); Just pick one of the pillars and follow it along to watch the motion happen through the space of the page. - 3/13
The tumbling bodies of the boys also follow a very realistic pattern… they slide down the pillars as they come up, hit the ceiling, roll along as it continues it's progression before tumbling down the pillars again to the floor. - 4/13
This is affective for me because it places the logic of gravity and the illogic of a tumbling room in direct opposition… both get what they want, even if only one makes sense. We're forced to reconcile this as readers, which, granted, isn't all that hard by this point… - 5/13
To be fair though, I was wondering if the tumbling of the room had something to do with Nemo tumbling out of bed… I'm not sure whether that tracks or not though; it would be quite a feat to tumble that much out of that bed. - 6/13
So, though I was hoping for a explanation for the tumbling room, I'll simply fall back on Befuddle Hall is illogical and console myself on the brilliance of seeing Nemo in such an awkward position both in Slumberland and the waking world. - 7/13
Now one other thing I noticed in my reading was that it seems as though Nemo and Flip might be starting to grate on each others nerves (or at least Flip on Nemo's)… his comment in panel 4 could be taken as playful ribbing… - 8/13
…but when read in the context of his following comment in panel 5, I'm not so sure… It's a good thing these friends are going to soon have a bit of a break from one another or we might see them go toe to toe sooner rather than later! - 9/13
In the end, while this is a pretty cool strip based on it's narrative panel content, McCay didn't really do much with the page… though I wonder if that's part of the point? - 10/13
The juxtaposition between the strict formal stability of regular panels in a regular grid (at least in tiers 1 and 2) really stands out against the instability of the panel content and the diegetic room. - 11/13
I think this is why I have such a strange reaction to this strip… outside of my reading it as a comic, I just… don't really like how it makes me *feel*… and I think that's the point. The dissonance is meant to disrupt our senses… and it sure does that for me. - 12/13
This is my reading of "Little Nemo in Slumberland" #125. What's yours? - 13/13