"Little Nemo in Slumberland" dated May 14, 1911:
Transcript of Tweets by @LittleNemo1905 (MARCH 31, 2021):
Well this strip is a weird one. That's not to suggest that it isn't delightful, BECAUSE IT ABSOLUTELY IS, but it's a weird one. - 1/17
Lots of logical jumps throughout (how does Nemo know that flower helps him talk to animals before the fella tells him? That hunter is pretty easily dissuaded by a little boy…), but we can forgive that all as dream logic. - 2/17
That said, there's lots of fun stuff here too. For starters, the fella selling (or gifting) the flowers looks like a genuine Slumberlandian! Is Nemo back in Slumberland proper? - 3/17
Again, this can either be read as a really quick return or it can be evidence of the fact that this was a "left over" strip. I don't want the latter to be true, so I have a theory… - 4/17
The entire narrative of this strip hinges on Nemo being able to communicate with the bear through the flower. In the end, the bear declares, "Wouldn't it be grand if we could tell our side of the story…" - 5/17
Considering McCay was leaving the Herald, and had previously felt constrained by them, could the bears be expressing McCay's feeling about the situation? Does he wish he could explain himself to his readers? - 6/17
The fact that they end the strip dancing around in a happy fashion suggests that we might, in fact, get that chance to hear the bears/McCay's side of the story… but then it ends. - 7/17
#SpoilerAlert: We'll continue this conversation tomorrow… - 8/17
I really love the rendering of the friendly bears in this strip; they're wonderful! - 9/17
The fact that Nemo chastises the hunter is interesting. Our little dreamer seems ahead of the times with his forward thinking reproach of the man who shoots at the bear. - 10/17
Bear hunting, he claims, is pointless because they don't want his meat or hide, they just want to kill. I feel as though this type of animal rights activism was not common in 1911. - 11/17
This strip resonated on a personal level for me because, when I was a young boy, my grandfather fed me bear-meat pepperettes without telling me what they were… - 12/17
It is, to this day, a pretty devastating memory (at the time, I thought that he had killed Winnie the Pooh). - 13/17
Growing up, I knew that my grandfather was a hunter and even then it bothered me. Bambi was one of my favourite movies at the time and he always justified hunting to my young and naïve self by saying he was out to get "bad Bambi's". - 14/17
How long I allowed myself to believe that, I can't actually say. - 15/17
Now, I'm not vilifying hunting or hunters, but rather relating a memory of my own to the strip. It resonates because I wish that I had been brave like Nemo and stood up for the animals way back when. - 16/17
This is my reading of "Little Nemo in Slumberland" #292. What's yours? - 17/17
Comments