"In the Land of Wonderful Dreams" dated October 22, 1911:
Transcript of Tweets by @LittleNemo1905 (APRIL 19, 2021):
A lot of familiar things happening here in this strip, from the narrative of escaping Flip's advances to the funhouse mirror moments in tier 3. - 1/16
McCay continues to remix some of what we saw previously in new and inventive ways, this time sprinkling in some elements of Greek myth to boot. - 2/16
Now, I'm cautious of saying that this is directly alluding to the Labyrinth of Crete (because I think that it has been through many popular culture revisions before reaching this strip), but the core idea harkens back to Daedelus' maze. - 3/16
Particularly, the idea that the maze is a punishment used by King Morpheus against those who go against him. King Minos of Crete used it similarly (though that version involves a monster in the maze and symbolic sacrifice of seven youths). - 4/16
Morpheus' maze punishment might be even worse than Minos' because the Princess emphasizes how they are left in the maze alone… I can only imagine the languish that would play on a person's mind stuck in a funhouse maze forever… - 5/16
We see just how disturbed Flip is by the ordeal in tier 3. He isn't frightened, but he is definitely unnerved by the experience. - 6/16
Thankfully, he is also level-headed enough to think of a way out, thus defeating the plot (and even doing King Morpheus a favour in the process; he'll need to fix that flaw, if he wants to keep using it for punishment…). - 7/16
All this said, the strip ends positively. But… what if it hadn't? - 8/16
I mean, this might be one of the cruelest ploys that we've seen used against Flip. Had he been lost in that maze… he might never have escaped. - 9/16
There is certainly some psychoanalytic reading of trapping a person within a dreamscape maze alone to see distortions of themselves for all eternity… - 10/16
If we return to our long-ago reading of "Flip as Id" and Nemo ("Ego") & the Princess' ("Superego") continued attempts to escape him, it's possible that we could read these strips as Nemo's continued attempts to control his "Id" in the waking world. - 11/16
It's even possible that there is a Lacanian reading here, where Flip's imprisonment within the mirror maze is meant to bridge the divide between the "imaginary" and the "real". - 12/16
As Nemo grows, he must recognize Flip (the symbolic) as a part of his unconscious mind, not a separate entity. - 13/16
If this is the case, his Id is proving unruly and this process of rectifying the "symbolic" process with the "real" is far from concluding. - 14/16
That would certainly need some more exploration (and may ultimately fail to be supportable), but between the mirror maze and the prominence of psychoanalytic possibility, it's one at least worth exploring. - 15/16
This is my reading of "In the Land of Wonderful Dreams" #310. What’s yours? - 16/16
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