"Little Nemo in Slumberland" dated November 15, 1908:
Transcript of Tweets by @LittleNemo1905 (NOVEMBER 10, 2020):
You know. For a strip that's primary purpose is to promote Victor Herbert's 1908 operetta, Little Nemo, on Broadway this strip is surprisingly meta and philosophical. - 1/25
The first tier in particular is pretty heavily focused on the musical as both Nemo's mother mentions it and the poster he runs passed announces the "Gorgeous Operatic Spectacle Little Nemo"! - 2/25
Opening on October 20, 1908 (almost exactly three year after the first #LittleNemo strip appeared) and closing on January 23, 1909, the musical was "an astounding critical success" (Valencia, 2015). - 3/25 [INSERT IMAGE]
If you're interested in a really fabulous discussion about the musical, including it's preparation, release, reception, and implications, this post by Brian D. Valencia from the @nypl is worth a read: - 4/25
Now, it's also worth mentioning that hearing this musical in performance is particularly tricky today… there seems (at least to my knowledge) only one recording of it and that is the Comic Opera Guild's 2005 recording (found here): - 5/25
I've also been able to track down both the Libretto and Score of the performance through various deep dives into the depths of the internet. While piecing it all together isn't a Herculean task, it's no small effort either. - 6/25
It's fun and light (as most early 1900s operetta is) and worthwhile for anyone interested in adaptation or the intersection of music and other forms of popular culture. - 7/25
Now, back to the strip. - 8/25
What I find most interesting about this strip is the deep meta-philosophical questions that it forces on the reader (and the fictional Nemo). - 9/25
As Nemo passes by the large poster that features so many familiar faces (as well as one that we haven't met in the strip; the Dancing Missionary), they begin to "come to life" and step out of the poster into the street. - 10/25
At first, one might be forgiven for thinking that this was a sort of portal where the friends we know and love from Slumberland could emerge from. - 11/25
Ultimately, that isn't the case though, as these depictions turn out to be simple paper simulacra that are not permitted to go far from their poster, lest they tear themselves. - 12/25
When Nemo begs them to return home to perform the show for his family, they at first agree. The only reason they turn back is because their leader, the faux-King Morpheus, orders them too. - 13/25
What I find most interesting here is that Flip just agrees and does as he's instructed saying, "he's the boss"… this is CLEARLY not our Flip… - 14/25
My favourite moment of the whole strip is when Faux-Nemo emerges off of the board and declares "so this is the real Nemo"… a logical thing to say, and yet, something we should immediately question because… well… Nemo isn't real. - 15/25
The Nemo that we have grown to love and follow each and every week is nothing more than paper too, isn't he? An ephemeral artefact from an ephemeral object that is crumbled, tossed, torn, folded and otherwise discarded weekly. - 16/25
Yet, each week on Sunday, Nemo is back; "alive" and well within the pages of a new material object that will repeat the cycle. - 17/25
In this way, how is poster Nemo any different? - 18/25
His acknowledgement that he (as in-universe living paper) has met the real version of himself (as OUR-universe living paper) unintentionally draws attention to us (the real?) and our relationship to Nemo. - 19/25
When, in panel 12, Nemo is sitting on the curb sadly (a wonderful blue tone washing the panel content to reinforces the emotion), he declares "shucks" because he cannot make his faux-friends come to his "real" home. - 20/25
Which evokes an interesting realization: No matter how much we love these characters they are fictional and can't be brought into the real world with us. Nemo, like us, is constrained in this strip to relationships mediated by the material. - 21/25
Which is the BRILLIANCE of this strip, isn't it? Because it promotes an experience where these characters CAN and DO exist in the real world; on stage in Herbert's Broadway musical. - 22/25
For the reader who wants more than a once weekly relationship with these characters, they can see them become (as Flip says in panel 11) "alive there" on stage! - 23/25
It really is an imaginative way to promote the musical without doing so in a mindless and simplistic strip about "going to the show"… it tackles the promotion with an interesting, nuanced, and highly impressive approach. - 24/25
This is my reading of "Little Nemo in Slumberland" #162. What's yours? - 25/25
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