"Little Nemo in Slumberland" dated August 08, 1909:
Transcript of Tweets by @LittleNemo1905 (DECEMBER 26, 2020):
Welcome back from the holidays! I hope that you all enjoyed a very festive Christmas yesterday (if you celebrate) filled with rest and relaxation! - 1/24
Today is a landmark for the project as we've reached the 200th strip in the #LittleNemo series! 349 strips to go! How exciting! - 2/24
As a brief recap, we ended before the holidays with a Fairy visiting our trio and informing Nemo that she would tell the Princess of Flip's newfound dedication to good (after Nemo walloped him a few weeks back)… - 3/24
…She said she'd go speak with the Princess but that Nemo (and by extension the reader) should prepare for some more strange happenings before she's able to come back. - 4/24
It seems those strange happenings kick off pretty quickly, as the space that has been like a blank/re-writable canvas for weeks now transforms into a lush, tropical (?) jungle of sorts. - 5/24
Now, if you recall, this space has been the site of many a transformative adventure (including the rushing water/stranded in the ocean bits), so I'm not totally convinced yet that this is a permanent transformation. - 6/24
That said… it sort of seems a bit more permanent, doesn't it? It's population (a group of English speaking monkeys) seem intent on taking the "sample of the human family" that they've found somewhere… - 7/24
This indicates that there is likely a simian civilization set-up here. One of them even references a mysterious place called the "Jonesonian Institute". - 8/24
I'm really fascinated by the appearance of these seemingly super-intelligent apes. 1909 seems, at least to me, to be quite early for this popular culture concept. - 9/24
The most popular depiction in this vein, the film #PlanetOfTheApes, directed by Franklin J. Schaffner and based on a 1963 novel, "La Planete des Singes" by French novelist Pierre Boulle, wouldn't be released for nearly 60 years. - 10/24 [INSERT IMAGE]
Another popular, though much less so, depiction of a super-intelligent simian community was introduced in 1959 within the pages of @DCComics Flash #106: Gorilla City. - 11/24 [INSERT IMAGES x 2]
Though I looked to see if I could discover others, all I kept finding were references to #PlanetOfTheApes… If anyone else knows of any accounts of civilized simians in popular culture, I'd be really interested to hear about them! - 12/24
It's also interesting to note that one of the simians calls another the "Colonel", which would suggest that they're civilization is structured (or modelled) around similar hierarchies and dimensions as our human ones. - 13/24
All this to say that I'm very interested to see where this goes… it seems that McCay is about 50 years ahead of the popular culture curve here if these monkey's do, indeed, come from some type of city populated by others like themselves. - 14/24
Now, though the simians (Monkeys? Apes? Gorillas? Not sure the best term here…) speak flawless English according the speech balloon content, I'm not sure whether Nemo and the boys can understand them. - 15/24
In panel 6 Nemo says, "I can't understand that gibberish! Huh!", which likely indicates that the strip is functioning as a translator for the reader so as to understand what Nemo and the boys don't. - 16/24
I find this truly fascinating; it distances us from the trio in a way that some of McCay's other work (primarily his meta-strips) simply don't do. Rather than implicate us as a part of Nemo's world here, the translation distances us. - 17/24
It gives us a power, granted by McCay, that only we, and not our fictional travel companions, have. - 18/24
Now, this is only a hypothesis right now; It very well could be nothing other then they were frightened, quickly shimmying up a tree to escape, and Nemo couldn't make out what they were saying. We'll have to wait and see. - 19/24
Finally, I'll just mention that there is some interesting productive elements to the layout of this strip. - 20/24
Tier one is horizontal, short, and quite flat (reflective of the flat terrain the boys find themselves in). Tier two is slightly more vertical in response to the growth of the trees and the boys commencement of progress up them. - 21/24
Finally, tier three present the largest and tallest panels of the page as the boys continue working their way up to the top, finally culminating in their reaching the tree's highest point before being caught/captured by the simian pursuers. - 22/24
It isn't much, but it's very subtle and meaningful spatial communication that functions well not only with the story it's telling, but works in concert with the pictorial representations that frame it. - 23/24
This is my reading of "Little Nemo in Slumberland" #200. What's yours? - 24/24