"Little Nemo in Slumberland" dated March 01, 1925:
Transcript of Tweets by @LittleNemo1905 (SEPTEMBER 17, 2021):
We've seen Flip's prowess as a circus performer AND animal tamer before at various points within the #LittleNemo series, so this one doesn't really stand out as anything special. - 1/11
I do note that McCay was obsessed with crossword puzzles lately… I vaguely remember someone mentioning that the Herald Tribune had recently added crossword puzzles to their paper, so this might be an editorial… suggestion. - 2/11
The puzzle is interrupted when a Lion emerges from underneath the table that the group is sitting at… and Flip proceeds to wrangle it into compliance. - 3/11
While this is happening, Pill and Figures have a conversation about their not being afraid of anything… while Nemo and Slivvers outwardly declare that Flip is braver than the two of them will ever be. - 4/11
Pill and Figures suggestion that life should be lived without fear… is just a terrible suggestion. Fear is part of what keeps us alive! Sure, it needs to be tempered, but fear is healthy! - 5/11
Nemo and Figures also choose the word "nerve" very carefully… I would no longer say that Nemo is fearful (at least in the sense that he is different from his earliest appearances), but they know wrangling with a lion is probably not going to work out well… - 6/11
Flip, as Nemo's id, is not worried about those things and given that this is a dreamscape (and we are unsure about whether the rules of life and death have any real grounding here) his conquering of the lion makes sense. - 7/11
The final two tiers are quite different in their spatial organization… McCay includes an intrusion into the space that *should* be available to panel 8 in order to accommodate the heightened centre of panel 10. - 8/11
With Flip's image centrally located in panel 8, it does create a sensation that he has won (the panel in the final tier looks almost like a podium, with Flip located in the first place spot in panel 8). - 9/11
It works… fine. But it doesn't do anything for me, really. I don't read it as productive in any way and thought it's a non-traditional layout, it doesn't serve any real narrative purpose (unless you buy the podium reading, which… meh). - 10/11
This is my reading of "Little Nemo in Slumberland" #452. What’s yours? - 11/11