"In the Land of Wonderful Dreams" dated April 14, 1912:
Transcript of Tweets by @LittleNemo1905 (MAY 12, 2021):
This strip sees the tables turned on Flip and it's rather quite funny! For weeks, he was making the Magician seem incompetent and now Impie is making him look equally foolish! - 1/21
I note that the wand has simply… become Flips. The Magician is no longer anywhere to be found and Flip claims that it his wand in both panel 1 and panel 9. - 2/21
Did the Magician simply abandon the wand because he was tired of being made the fool? Did he give it to Flip because of his command of the magic? - 3/21
There is no explanation given, but it just seems odd that everyone would simply go along with it. He's essentially stolen the wand without repercussion. - 4/21
That said, the group seems to be in a much better place… even Doctor Pill acknowledges that Flip's desire to keep the peace is genuine in panel 3. - 5/21
Everyone is also quite excited to see the "soda geysers". I'll admit, I too was pretty excited when I heard where they were going… initially though, I was disappointed because I thought it would be like every other Slumberland sight; we won't see it. - 6/21
But, indeed, we do see it! And it is MARVELLOUS! - 7/21
The middle of this strip is a work of art all on it's own in my opinion… the embedded gestural movement that we see happen through closure as Pill climbs onto the geyser is really great! - 8/21
Better still is panel 8! In a beautiful example of spatial and narrative congruity, the long vertical panel depicts the geyser spouting and Pill soaring into the sky! - 9/21
The spatial layout of panel 4-8 are awesome and depict a true blockage pattern. Check out d) in the image below (all credit to @visual_linguist for the wonderful breakdown image): - 10/21 [INSERT IMAGE]
I know we've seen McCay use similar layouts before, but it still amazes me that this experimental page design is being used so early in the 20th century! - 11/21
I love it's dynamism; the panel is responding to the action here! It isn't just a formal tool or frame that is containing the panel content, but a living communicative element that reacts to what's happening. - 12/21
I absolutely love it. - 13/21
Of course, the bottom tier goes back to a more traditional panelling because, well… the final gag depends on it. Without losing the upper half of the panel, we'd watch Pill descend through the sky and the collision between him and Flip would be less impactful… - 14/21
Well, in a manner of speaking anyway… - 15/21
There really is only one final thing I want to touch on with this strip and it's Impie's being tied up. - 16/21
After all of the chaos and trouble that Flip has caused, he's never once lost his freedom or been confined. Instead, the group just simply ran away from him or did their best to avoid him. - 17/21
Here, after a single (or two) incidents of trickery, Impie is tied up and dragged along anyway. There is very clearly a double standard here that needs to be explored. - 18/21
Yet, that said, Impie still manages to make Flip the fool by stealing the wand and causing all the hilarity that ensues… how he's dealt with by Flip we don't see because it occurs off panel, but we do know Flip gets the wand back. - 19/21
Impie's agency has sky-rocketed as of late and even when it is seemingly taken from him (by being tied up, for instance) he finds a way to re-assert himself. This will be a continuous focus of my readings moving forward, I think. - 20/21
This is my reading of "In the Land of Wonderful Dreams" #332. What's yours? - 21/21