"Little Nemo in Slumberland" dated July 05, 1925:
Transcript of Tweets by @LittleNemo1905 (OCTOBER 15, 2021):
I don't know about all of you… but I was waiting for something to go catastrophically wrong… and it never did. - 1/17
I think the most interesting part about this strip is that it actually works out exactly as Flip intends it to… pretty much the whole time that I was reading, I was waiting for the shoe to drop… or, well, the Flip to drop. - 2/17
The fact that we make it all the way to end and that he lands safely (not to mention that the cannoneer somehow actually lands a direct hit on the airplane) is simply astounding. - 3/17
Of course, as Pill points out, it might just be an advertising stunt.. .and not just for the characters in the comic! - 4/17
While it might be a fictional company and Pill might be suggesting the stunt is to sell more candy in the fictional Slumberland, it's also possible that this was a ploy to sell more taffy in the "real" world, too! - 5/17
I couldn't find any evidence of a "Pullitis" (does that look right?) Molasses Taffy ever existing, but that doesn't mean it didn’t. - 6/17
Fiction as advertising/marketing is not in any way an unheard of concept, and even in the early-to-mid 1900s I'm sure it was prevalent. - 7/17
Again, I can't confirm that for sure, but if anyone else has thoughts on it I'd love to hear them! - 8/17
I'd also like to mention that tier three is a thing of beauty. It demonstrates McCay's mastery over perspective just incredibly well. - 9/17
The way the angle of perspective shifts around (especially between panels 8 and 9) displays a really brilliant handle on the way that perspective impacts storytelling. - 10/17
It also makes the penultimate celebration a bit more meaningful. Panel 9 leaves Flip dangling precariously… it's almost an attempt at short-term suspense; will the taffy snap or will he land! - 11/17
How this moment impacts us depends on the material way we engage with it. - 12/17
I read this first in the print copy, so I had already taken in the penultimate panel before reading it and knew that Flip landed safe, as a result. - 13/17
Interestingly, when I was scrolling through the digital file preparing for upload, I re-read the strip. Because of the way that I enlarge the digital files on the screen to view them, this time as I scrolled downward, the suspenseful moment was more impactful. - 14/17
I reached panel 9 without having scrolled down to 10 and, I imagine, that if I were unfamiliar with this strip, that moment might have provided a heightened sense of (momentary) concern as the uncertainty hit me. - 15/17
I reiterate that I'm never afraid our characters will be hurt or killed, but by this point Flip was SO CLOSE to making this thing work and to have it fail at the end really would've bummed me out. - 16/17
This is my reading of "Little Nemo in Slumberland" #471. What's yours? - 17/17