"Little Nemo in Slumberland" dated April 02, 1911:
Transcript of Tweets by @LittleNemo1905 (MARCH 25, 2021):
Indianapolis is the next (and penultimate) stop on our Sightseeing Series… before things get really weird. More on that later. - 1/13
The top tier is really interesting, if only because the second tier splits it in half. I can't recall another instance where the reader has been asked to skip part of another panel to get to the one McCay wants them to read. - 2/13
It isn't that it doesn't work (it surely demonstrates the scale of the Soliders & Sailors Monument), but it's clunky… it's the first time in a VERY long time that I had to resort to looking for the panel numbers for guidance. - 3/13
When compared to the really impressive use of the circle panel last strip, this one feels like a big "womp womp". - 4/13
Beyond that, the gag of this strip could have *actually* been really funny! For pretty much the entire second and third tier of the strip, I thought that there was a parade of tricksters! - 5/13
I thought panel 5 was Impie showing the Captain his handywork with putting the sign on the child tour guide, while the Captain placed a sign on Impie and Impie placed on one the Captain… - 6/13
How Flip got his sign, I wasn't certain… but it really doesn’t matter because the term used to describe Impie turned me off completely. - 7/13
A combination of dehumanization and animalisation, we've spoken a lot previously about how this early 20th century proclivity for labelling Black American's with simian language was wholly problematic. - 8/13
Here, it rears it's ugly head again. This is so disappointing because it was the first strip in a really long time where Impie was involved in the action for no reason other than to be involved! - 9/13
It's so sad that, of late, every single one of Impie's appearances (or lack of appearance) has presented some reading fueled by systemic racism or ethnic caricature… I'm hoping this does not become a trend moving forward. - 10/13
And this isn't even mentioning the Captain's continued rude, and very overt, racist comments to him in panel 5 (whether they would have been thought of as racist in 1911 matters very little; it still promoted white, Euro-American superiority). - 11/13
All in all, I think this is another example of a strong strip, ultimately ruined by the inclusion of early 1900s racial ignorance. A comic worth discussing, but much less enjoyable (aesthetically) as a result. - 12/13
This is my reading of "Little Nemo in Slumberland" #286. What's yours? - 13/13
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