"In the Land of Wonderful Dreams" dated February 16, 1913:
Transcript of Tweets by @LittleNemo1905 (JUNE 24, 2021):
I quite liked this strip, if only because it speaks strongly to my musical experience, education, and background. - 1/25
Of immediate note is the brilliance of panel 2 and 3. We've talked about music in comics before (McCay's even done similar things before), but incorporating the entire melody as a diptych across two panels is a really neat idea. - 2/25
Before we talk too much about why I think this is formally incredible, let's listen to the song shall we? - 3/25
A huge thank you to my beautiful and talented wife, Victoria, who allowed me to record her playing this beautiful short piece. - 4/25
Now, notice that the recording is, approximately, 35 seconds. That means that the temporal reality spread between those two panels is, at the VERY least, 35 seconds. - 5/25
It is often said that the visual content of a comics panel is a single moment in time, but that is a misconception and these two panels support that. In order for that piece of music to be heard by the characters within the strip, much more than a couple seconds passes by. - 6/25
My personal descriptor for this sort of thing is "intrapanel closure". There might be other more formalized terms, but that's the one I've adopted. - 7/25
This sort of "intrapanel closure" suggests that just like the closure that occurs between panels (in the gutter), there is *almost* always a similar closure that occurs within panels, as well. - 8/25
It is, of course, the same with dialogue (it's highly doubtful that in length of time it takes to say something other characters stand static and motionless), but we tend not to think about that nearly as much. - 9/25
I'm not pretending like this is anything new, McCloud (1993) discussed it at length in #UnderstandingComics ("Time in comics is infinitely weirder than that!", p. 94), but I do think that it draws attention to a reality we don't tend to focus much on while reading. - 10/25
Beyond that, we learn some fun things about Doctor Pill (who fancies himself a singer, but is not really all that good), as well as the Princess (clearly, a gifted pianist) and Nemo (who also, at the very least, plays piano). - 11/25
For whatever reason, Flip and Splinters are left out in the cold (are they intentionally barred from admittance or did they choose to be outside?) planning a concert to impress the Princess. - 12/25
Now, notably, Impie is inside. More often than not, particularly of late, Impie is where Flip is. Has he been replaced by Splinters? - 13/25
If he has been replaced, does this grant him a privilege that being associated with Flip denied him previously? He is *in* the palace… sitting passively as a reactive observer (unfortunately), but he has access to a space that we've seen him be denied before. - 14/25
I'm interested in this, but I don't fully know what to make of it, nor whether we *can* actually make anything of it without a bit more textual evidence to draw on. I'll be watching for this moving forward. - 15/25
Now, either I don't understand how we got form point A to point B (which is entirely possible), or the transition from panel 8 to 9 is just awful. - 16/25
Why does noise outside turn into getting shovels to toss snow off the roof? Is Doctor Pill planning to bury the noisemaker outside thinking it a predator of some sort? - 17/25
If so… why not just look out the window first? Or off the roof before plowing the snow off? I mean… the gag is clearly Flip and Splinters getting buried, but it's an entirely avoidable gag. - 18/25
Maybe it's meant to emphasize Pill's lack of common sense? I really don't know… it was one part of the strip where I stopped dead and had to re-read to see what I'd missed. - 19/25
The penultimate panel makes the Princess again seem very empathetic to Flip, which continues a positive trend in their relationship. We're seeing a reciprocity occur across the strips in regards to their friendship and I really enjoy it. - 20/25
Finally, I'll just mention that we discussed the ever growing band of characters that McCay is using week to week now and I thought this strip was an example of them all being used fairly well. - 21/25
Every character in the immediate group is featured in the strip and most of them fairly prominently, too. Figures and Splinters don't do much, I'll admit, but Figures speaks and Splinters is the one-man-band involved in Flip's plan, so he's integral to the narrative. - 22/25
Sadly, Impie remains the least included character, which is hardly surprising anymore. He continues to be steeped in racist caricature reliant on gestural communication rather than the linguistic that he learned earlier in the NY American series, and no one speaks to him. - 23/25
I know that this balanced usage of characters (Impie's poor treatment not withstanding) won't last throughout the following strips, but it was interesting to see a more successful example of how it *could* work. - 25/25
This is my reading of "In the Land of Wonderful Dreams" #374. What's yours? - 25/25