"In the Land of Wonderful Dreams" dated February 04, 1912:
Transcript of Tweets by @LittleNemo1905 (MAY 04, 2021):
Things were really looking up in this comic. It seemed like Flip and Doctor Pill had sort of worked through their issues and were both willing to give a truce the old college try… - 1/20
Whether or not this mile a second Ostrich ride would have ended in anything other than Flip and Pill going at it will never be known because Impie shows up and, after his snapping turtle catches Pill's nose, Flip and Impie are dumped off. - 2/20
Impie has been absent from the #LittleNemo strips for quite some time now… If I'm correct, his last sighting was April 23, 1911 in Day #289! Almost a full year ago (and newspaper change over, as well). - 3/20
Now, as we've discussed, Impie's absence has been a bit of a mixed bag. Sure, we missed him as one of the gang (at least I did…), his harmful racial caricature could do little harm to young children when he wasn't being depicted on panel. - 4/20
Visually, very little has changed from the Herald to the American; Impie is still stereotypically depicted as a Jungle Imp wearing skimpy tribal clothes and physiologically caricatured in the same problematic manner as ever before (exaggerated lips, wild hair, giant eyes, etc.). - 5/20
Though there is a significant change about Impie in this strip… he can speak English. - 6/20
In the NY Herald iteration of Impie, he was unable to speak anything other than the language of his people from the Candy Island. It would seem that, during his year away, McCay has endowed him with the gift of language. - 7/20
Well… maybe the curse of language. While we've noted many times that Impie was held back from his lack of voice and agency, he is now depicted with a heavily caricatured dialect. - 8/20
The exaggerated dialect, a common way to other Black Americans in popular culture, only really helps to further divide Impie from the others, who (for the most part) speak fluently. - 9/20
It's true that Flip is occasionally presented with an accent (which does signal "otherness" through his ethnic position), it is quite different from the linguistic othering done here to Impie. The general idea of what he is trying to say is understandable, but it is far from clear. - 10/20
So, though Impie has re-appeared and is now a presence in the series again… I don't believe that it can be said that it is for the best. In fact, this new version of Impie may only be marginally better than his predecessor (if any at all). - 11/20
There is also the question of the turtle. Where was his going in the first place? What was the turtle doing in a bag? What was to become of the turtle? What happened to it after they were dumped? - 12/20
The strip leaves many unanswered questions, but this simple inclusion also continues to reinforce the racial caricature being perpetuated across the page because it too aligns Impie with mischief and animals; two things frequently associated with pickaninny characters. - 13/20
All this said, while my reaction to Impie's return was lukewarm, Flip was quite excited to see him! Even Nemo calls out to his friend in panel 3. - 14/20
There really was no question about including him in their fun; Flip immediately asks him to join the group. And, to be fair, it isn’t Impie's fault that everything goes awry… he was minding his own business, with the turtle in a bag, and was invited to join his old friends. - 15/20
Doctor Pill can't have thought that was an intended slight… it really was, at least in my opinion, a massive overreaction to dump the two boys off. - 16/20
That said, even the Princess blamed Flip… so maybe Pill really *did* think that Impie and the turtle were plants? - 17/20
The end of the strip takes a bit of a nightmarish twist as Flip and Impie come barrelling towards the Ostrich ride on a locomotive forcing everyone to dive off the chariot in an effort to escape it's incoming assault. - 18/20
The contrast between ostriches and chariots and a steam engine is quite interesting here… commentary about the ever increasing speed with which technology is adapting and evolving? It's possible. - 19/20
This is my reading of "In the Land of Wonderful Dreams" #325. What's yours? - 20/20
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