"Little Nemo in Slumberland" dated July 26, 1908:
Transcript of Tweets by @LittleNemo1905; Guest Curated by @pfxbryan (OCTOBER 24, 2020):
The #WalkingBed is on the one hand instantly recognizable, yet not omnipresent. It does not appear in Tom Petty’s “Running Down A Dream,” not immortalized as an ice cream stand (as was Gertie the Dinosaur), nor a trope in its own right as the Flying Bed is. (1/23)
Still, the #WalkingBed, with its elongated, bendy legs shows up in some unanticipated spaces…though perhaps not where expected. Chris Totten discussed the appearance of the Walking Bed in other media on Monday, and this question of adaptation has always intrigued me… (2/23)
…with the Bed in particular indicative of Winsor McCay’s reach and the limited thereof. As Maurice Sendak wrote of McCay in the introduction to Canemaker’s biography: “America still doesn't take its great fantasists all that seriously.” (3/23)
Perhaps the most famous appearance of the #WalkingBed in comics that I have found is the cover for Batman #377 (November 1984) by Ed Hannigan and Dick Giordano; unfortunately, it proves quite disconnected to the actual content of the issue (a courtroom adoption drama). (4/23) IMAGE 1
The #WalkingBed also appears on the American boxart of Capcom’s Little Nemo Dream Master (1989) also features the Walking Bed, likely a reference to the Bed’s appearance late in the film…though apparently not on the Famicom version. (5/23) IMAGES 2 and 3
There are a few real-life versions of the #WalkingBed, though mostly in Europe (perhaps reinforcing Sendak’s point); though there is a Gertie the Dinosaur at Walt Disney World’s Hollywood Studios, so McCay has some representation. (6/23) IMAGE 4
The #WalkingBed is part of an exhibit housed at the Belgian Comic Strip Center (2015); the museum focuses heavily on Belgian artists (Hergé and Peyo should be known to most audiences), yet features a few references to American comics, including this installation. (7/23) IMAGE 5
Another was featured at Delcourt’s booth at the Angouleme Festival (credit to Bart Beaty) in 2007, larger and more elaborate still, but its current whereabouts (if it was not destroyed) are unclear. (8/23) IMAGE 6
Delcourt also utilized a variation on the Walking Bed (in this case, a desk) for the recent Little Nemo in Bedeland (2019), featuring short stories from various student artists producing short comics around Nemo, with the #WalkingBed even appearing briefly in on strip. (9/23) IMAGE 7
Chris Totten already mentioned its appearance in the 1989 Little Nemo animated feature; it appears late in the film in a roughly 40 second sequence, but animation studio TMS captures the movement (if not the full sense of scale) of McCay’s original. (10/23) GIF 1
A year later, the Swedish claymation series Pingu featured a play on Little Nemo in general (even including falling out of bed at the end), and the Walking Bed in particular, though the Antarctic setting does not feature the urban architecture of other adaptations. (11/23) GIF 2
The strange geometry appears in other, non-furniture shapes; the most apparent to me (though it may be a stretch) is the motion of Jake the Dog in Adventure Time (2010), who features in the opening as a mount for Finn the Human as they walk among the mountain tops. (12/23) GIF 3
Masaaki Yuasa’s subversion in “Food Chain” plays in this same vein, though as above, the Walking Bed plays out the same, with wobbly, playing within the dream logic of that episode, but also echoing the anime inspirations of the series. (13/23) IMAGE 8
This all gets to my larger question: we agree on the influence of Little Nemo in the development of comics, so why not more references to this most famous strip in other comics or media? Part might be Sendak’s words, that McCay was simply overlooked… (14/23)
…or that Gertie the Dinosaur is viewed as McCay’s great contribution (Walt Disney spoke quite highly of Gertie, even inviting Robert McCay to perform his father’s routine on television) and displaced the bed… (15/23)
…or perhaps that, like many of McCay’s innovations, they were difficult to reproduce without his skill, techniques, and the space of the Sunday page. The examples of the Walking Bed cross transnational boundaries and the decades its publication. (16/23)
There is no dedicated Winsor McCay Museum in America, though the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library holds much of his collection (including original Gertie the Dinosaur stills!), and other elements of his work are held in various archives and comics museums. (17/23)
I think of ToonSeum in Pittsburgh closing in 2018; it was a small space, but one that might have held a sculpture like the Walking Bed. Perhaps comics, ephemeral things that they are, were not meant to be kept in a museum. (18/23)
McCay’s ideas are far larger than the newspaper pages that contained, straining against the panel here as in other stories; like any wonderful dream, they cannot be constrained to just a panel, strip, or medium. (19/23)
Of course, I am being slightly facetious: there is a Nemo and his bed on display in America. In the Toon Lagoon section of Universal Studios Orlando, Nemo, Flip, and the Walking Bed appear (photo by Sam Allen). (20/23) IMAGE 9
Perhaps only America would the great museum to comic art be a theme park. The Walking Bed is not hidden away in a museum, but in public, looming over a gift shop with a dozen other relics of comics history (photo by Matt Tauber). (21/23) IMAGE 10
The Walking Bed remains adaptable, like all great art, and inspires everything from children’s cartoons to art exhibits to theme park decoration. I likely have missed some further appearances of said Bed (or Bed-like things), but I am always on the lookout. (22/23)
So, as before, what I have overlooked of this miraculous Walking Bed and its endless adaptations into other media? (23/23)