Nemo is a flagrant favorite of many current artists from Alan Moore to Chris Ware to Neil Gaiman, but his broader impact is regrettably limited.

Nemo in Slumberland exists on a curious periphery of the cultural imagination familiar enough for a charming Google Doodle but not quite for general awareness. Another exception is the medium of newspaper comics, where two of the most towering peaks in the form date from before 1930: George Herriman’s Krazy Kat, the greatest tale of unrequited interspecies love and brick-throwing from any era, and Winsor McCay’s Nemo in Slumberland, possibly the most opulent feature of any kind ever to grace American newspapers and now available in an immense and immensely captivating Taschen edition, The Complete Little Nemo. While it’s hard to agree, it’s equally hard not to concede the point at least a little once you’ve experienced some of that early riotous creativity. Edward Gorey, in one of his more esoteric opinions, once argued that cinema had reached its zenith before 1919. Except in those rare cases when it might not. Source: Wikimedia Commons.The trajectory of any new artistic genre-oil painting, the novel, video installation-is almost always to improve, or at least grow more inventive. In 1913, George Herriman debuted Krazy Kat, a strange comic about a love triangle between Ignatz the mouse, Krazy the cat, and friendly Offissa Pupp, set against a background of stark, abstract landscapes. Other artists quickly took note: Winsor McCay's Art Nouveau masterpiece Little Nemo in Slumberland premiered in the New York Herald in 1905, followed by Henry Conway Fisher's slapstick humor strip Mutt & Jeff in 1907 (credited as the first comic to use panel borders, rather then simply arranging images sequentially). The strip was a cultural phenomenon, and ' Outcault’s scrappy protagonist became the first merchandized comic strip character, appearing on cracker tins, cigarette packs, ladies’ fans, buttons, and a host of other artifacts” (Abate 2021). Michelle Ann Abate, 'The Yellow Kid and the Yellow Peril' The kids were led by a scrappy young boy whose given name was Mickey Dugan but who quickly became known by the nickname “The Yellow Kid” after the mustard-colored nightshirt that he commonly wore. Set in the tenements of New York’s Lower East Side, the comic chronicles the antics of a group of raucous working-class children. On October 18th, 1896, newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst published the first issue of the American Humorist, a color supplement to the New York Journal which featured what is considered the first modern comic strip: Hogan's Alley, by Richard F.

Little nemo in slumberland comic strips