"Little Nemo in Slumberland" dated May 07, 1911:
Transcript of Tweets by @LittleNemo1905 (MARCH 30, 2021):
This strip completely abandons the pretense of the airship and sightseeing tour and brings us back to the more episodic nature of the early Nemo comics. - 1/20
Obviously, these are the one that give you a sense of "being used up" or "leftover", but (as I've mentioned previously) they're still great. - 2/20
Though the last one was out of formula, it still mentioned trying to get to Milwaukee and the Princess was a part of the fun. This time, it’s just Nemo and his mother. - 3/20
I often wonder if I like the last strip or this one more, but I frequently settle on the last one mainly because this strip is badly impacted by the removal of colour. - 4/20
Though not as visually dense as the last red tri-tone strip, it is still missing something; primarily, the vibrancy and beauty of the painting/sign that Nemo enters. - 5/20
It seems as though McCay intended for this strip to be done in full colour; he draws attention to the colour in panel 3, which seems an odd choice if he knew that it would be in tritone. - 6/20
Could it have been an invitation for the kids to use their imagination? An indictment of the Herald for choosing to relegate #LittleNemo to tritone in the back of the supplement section in his final days? - 7/20
Either way, Nemo mentions how brilliantly and beautifully the water looks: "I wish I could paint water as natural as that," he says. - 8/20
You all know how much I love the way McCay handles water, so it's truly a bummer not to see it here. Might be the biggest strike against the comic for me, personally. - 9/20
That said, it is really another example of McCay's brilliant (meta)mind for these sorts of things. - 10/20
Nemo easily enters into the artistic frame and wades into the water painted on the sign. Of course, the painters see this as a lucky break, as now they don't need to pain a little boy in the painting! - 11/20
That Nemo can't swing works well because, hey, this is a sign for using water wings and learning how to swim! Nemo's distress, which becomes permanent as he is painted in, fits the bill of the strips intended message! - 12/20
There is a lot here, but I particularly like the ideas of agency that this strip brings up (especially with respect to the *loss* of agency). - 13/20
Nemo is, of course, a cartoon supplement himself; drawn, coloured, and printed like any other. The artists within the comic are also supplements fulfilling the edict of their intelligent designer, McCay. - 14/20
Nemo is, of course, at all points in the comic frozen or "painted on there" yet his agency is narratively removed the moment he is meant to be viewed less as an aesthetic object, and more as a communicative one. - 15/20
It seems to me that this idea fits McCay's artistic vision very well; the comic strip is an artistic endeavour and, above all else (even communication), artistic endeavours are about creating aesthetic experiences for the reader. - 16/20
It's been noted previously that McCay was frustrated by the directions the Herald were increasingly asking him to go (editorially) with his work. - 17/20
Could this strip then be a way of suggesting that Nemo had become trapped by the Herald? Something that the editorial direction of the paper had warped away from his original aesthetic vision? - 18/20
If so, it speaks then to both Nemo's narrative agency (where he could and could not go within the dreamscape/Slumberland) and McCay's artistic agency (the potential interference by the Herald into his work). - 19/20
This is my reading of "Little Nemo in Slumberland" #291. What's yours? - 20/20
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