"In the Land of Wonderful Dreams" dated July 28, 1912:
Transcript of Tweets by @LittleNemo1905 (MAY 28, 2021):
There was a small window of strips during which Doctor Pill and Flip seems to get along…. And now we're back to Pill hating on and trying to abandon Flip and Impie at every turn. - 1/15
I'm really not sure what caused this reversion; I thought we were making progress. But, alas, this is yet another example of the mayhem caused by Pill's determination to abandon the pair. - 2/15
Now, I'm not saying that Flip and Impie haven't their fair share of blame in the past, but if Pill would just give this up and include them (the Princess and Nemo are on board with that) then we'd be able to move on from this sort of ruckus. - 3/15
Flip and Impie might not be doing the smartest thing in the world as they try to climb the tail of an 800-ft tall elephant, but they just want to be included. Is that so bad? - 4/15
Clearly, the elephant thinks so! McCay does a brilliant job in panel 7 using massive eyes that contrast the earlier small black dots to represent his distress. I don't blame the big fella for bolting! - 5/15
The final tier shows the destruction that a massive elephant can cause in a city! He bumps into buildings in panel 10 and they start to collapse and fall around them in 11! - 6/15
Of course, large things destroying buildings really is nothing new for McCay. Flip did something very similar way back in one of the more famous strips from 1907: - 7/15
And Pill and Flip battled in the "Little Place" not too long ago: - 8/15
We've spoken at length in previous threads about the Kaiju movement and McCay's potential connections to it, so I won't do it again here. That said, it's safe to assume that an 800 ft elephant would definitely be considered a kaiju, right? - 9/15
Speaking of big elephants, I can never see these animals in McCay's work and not think back to 1906 when we met Jumbo, the elephant that Nemo refers to in panel 2: - 10/15
At the time, I wasn't aware of the real Jumbo, it wasn't until @pfxbryan wondered aloud if McCay was depicting P.T. Barnum's elephant that the pieces fell into place. You can read more about that here, if you'd like: - 11/15
Now, I can't see elephants in McCay's work without thinking of Jumbo. The more time that passes, the more sure I am that strip #50 and #51 are depicting the real Jumbo. - 12/15
By invoking such a famous name, 25 years after Jumbo's passing, I'm led to believe that he was so firmly entrenched in popular, children's, or, at the very least, Nemo's consciousness that everyone at the time would recognize the allusion . - 13/15
I feel strongly that by bringing up Jumbo here, the reading we discussed about those two strips from 1906 can be even more strongly supported. The allusion both unmistakable and meaningful. - 14/15
This is my reading of "In the Land of Wonderful Dreams" #347. What's yours? - 15/15