"Little Nemo in Slumberland" dated February 07, 1926:
Transcript of Tweets by @LittleNemo1905 (NOVEMBER 16, 2021):
As is always the case when our characters are put in "life threatening" situations, I was never all that concerned with Flip's well-being I this strip. - 1/20
Of course, the same can't be said for the Princess who was beside herself with fear at the thought of the lion ripping Flip to shreds. - 2/20
I simply couldn't help but think way back to 1906 when the Princess tried to distract Nemo so that the Slumberlandian guards could execute Flip… look how far the two have come! - 3/20
While this element stood out to me, another was the animal cruelty angle; McCay leans in heavily to the idea that what Flip is doing is cruelty to animals. - 4/20
And, of course, by our modern sensibilities it undeniably is… the animal was starved and beaten up for the sake of human spectacle and entertainment. The poor lion (fictional/dream being as he is) is the victim here! - 5/20
We've known McCay to swing towards animal activism in the past (we spoke about this a lot during the tri-colour series at the end of the NY Herald years) but this is much more overt than anything we've seen before. - 6/20
Though this particular situation with Flip and the Lion isn't nearly as terrible, I was immediately reminded me of the 1903 murder of Topsy the elephant in Coney Island. - 7/20
What interests me the most is McCay's shift from suggestion to outright declaration. The fellow speaking with Figures claims that, "it was an awful exhibition of cruelty." Has McCay ever been so forward about this before? - 8/20
Of course, Flip gets away scott free because of his association with the Princess, which smacks of a lesson in privilege. - 9/20
Again, he was going to be executed in the earliest strips and now he is off the hook for animal abuse because of the Princess' concern for him? - 10/20
I mean… I know this wasn't an intended reading, but hot damn if this doesn't give us great ammunition in the classroom to discuss what "privilege" actually looks like… - 11/20
It also provides some interesting thinking about how Flip, once defined by his ethnic caricature, has become less and less "stereotyped" as the series has progressed. - 12/20
We've noted that Flip has become a centrepiece lots of times, but interesting here is the way that the narrative provides him some "armour" (through the aforementioned privilege) that other Irish-Americans would certainly not possess. - 13/20
I don't know for sure, but I'm wondering if this change reflected the growing acceptance of Irish Americans in the 1920s? Please, correct me if I'm wrong; this is more a supposition than anything else. - 14/20
Finally, I'll end by saying that I think keeping the fight off-panel was a smart move on McCay's part. - 15/20
The reason is two-fold. First, it prevents him from visually depicting any representations of animal cruelty, and second, it allows the reader to really stretch their imaginative muscles. - 16/20
I like the intrapanel closure that it creates; you're left to "fill in the blanks", as it were, of the action that is not depicted. It's clever and really give the linguistic mode something meaningful to do (beyond it's normal communicative load). - 17/20
All in all, this is an interesting strip and one that I think has a lot of potential for educational use. It's one of the stronger strips in the revival series and worth thinking about. - 18/20
I'm looking forward to hearing all of your thoughts on this one. I think I've only scratched the surface of potential readings here. - 19/20
This is my reading of "Little Nemo in Slumberland" # 502. What’s yours? - 20/20