"In the Land of Wonderful Dreams" dated July 07, 1912:
Transcript of Tweets by @LittleNemo1905 (MAY 25, 2021):
With this strip, we've moved away from the nursery rhymes and Mother Gooseville in favour for another trip… this time to the royalty of Slumberland's summer house! - 1/20
A quick aside here, when I read this strip I was disappointed to see the continuation of a static grid structure… I really do prefer it when McCay varies his panel size, shape, placement, count, and (formal) use. - 2/20
The last handful have used identical spatial organization and it's been almost four months since we've seen something formally exciting! This isn't a fault of this strip in particular, just a personal note to say that I noted it to myself as I was reading this strip. - 3/20
It's probably because, I think, this strip had the possibility for something interesting… maybe an inversion of the soda geyser incident. Rather than going *up*, Flip and Impie could have gone *down*. - 4/20
Now, the strip is a pretty simple and rather uninteresting set-up strip… the royal family (and Nemo) are on their way to the King's summer home and Impie and Flip are not invited. - 5/20
Narratively, this strip is simultaneously frustrating and inspiring. - 6/20
It frustrates me to see Doctor Pill's disdain for Flip rear it's head again… has he been play acting all this time? It truly seemed as though they were getting along much better. - 7/20
What *really* interests me about this, is that it makes me rethink all of the past strips and how Pill treated Flip as ingenuine. None more so than the lobster pie incident… - 8/20
That background cackle in the penultimate panel seems much less innocuous now… It has caused me to renegotiate meanings from past strips that I had previously considered character/relationship developing moments. - 9/20
Similarly, but in the opposite direction, the Princess continues to advocate on Flip's behalf. She says multiple times how she wishes he'd be allowed to come and she even chastises Pill for his meanness at panel 9. - 10/20
We've been noticing for a while that she seems to be on Flip's side more and more of late and this really concretizes that idea for me. She is, at this point, his staunchest supporter. - 11/20
Of course, that role *used* to belong to his friend, Nemo. - 12/20
Nemo, for his part, stays pretty darned quiet. His passivity is continually becoming more and more apparent; he is really just along for the ride at this point. - 13/20
I'm not sure how to feel about it, because it is becoming increasingly as if Nemo is only there as a conduit for the reader to enter Slumberland and less of a character in his own right. - 14/20
We're here to read about the exploits of (it seems) everyone *except* Nemo. I wonder why he has become so much more withdrawn? - 15/20
For his part, Flip is perfectly on character (though I wish we'd seen him actually empty all of Pill's medicine; his comment about healing any ailment in panel 6 would be much funnier)… - 16/20
…and, as has become custom as of late, Impie is not even acknowledged by the characters. No one tells Impie he isn't invited. I guess they feel as though that is simply implied. - 17/20
Again, this strip's silent and unspoken internalization of Jim Crow era racism is very obvious here. - 18/20
I'll end just by mentioning that, if this strip has a stand-out feature, it's certainly the colouring. Again, a really impressive job on this particular strip that highlights the failing and inconsistency of ones that have come before. - 19/20
This is my reading of "In the Land of Wonderful Dreams" #344. What’s yours? - 20/20