Little Nemo in Slumberland

Little Nemo in Slumberland is a comic by Winsor McCay, considered the first great classic in comic history. It was published for the first time in the New York Herald between October 15, 1905 and July 23, 1911. Although it is not translated into Spanish, it would literally be Little Nemo in the Dreamland.

Argument

The protagonist of the comic was a boy named Nemo - 'nobody', in Latin -, and each Sunday page of the series corresponded to a dream of his. The protagonist always woke up in the last panel of the page, sometimes crying, falling out of bed, or having to be attended to by his parents. Nemo's dreams, however, had narrative continuity, which gave the series a soap opera structure very suitable for introducing numerous secondary characters and showing a dream world (Slumberland) of great narrative richness..

At the beginning of this series, Nemo is visited in his dreams by an emissary of King Morpheus, with the order to take him to the Land of Dreams, where he must become a playmate of the Princess (whose name is not mentioned in the comic). He succeeds, after many vicissitudes, but then his dream is interrupted by the appearance of a strange character, Flip , who wears a top hat with the phrase 'Wake Up' 3. 4; ("Wake up") written on it. Since then, Flip becomes Nemo's main antagonist, because just by seeing him, he sends the protagonist back to prosaic reality. Flip ends up becoming Nemo's somewhat thuggish companion, and other secondary characters appear, such as Doctor Pill, Imp, Candy Boy and Santa Claus, in addition to those previously mentioned.

Style

In this work, McCay carries out an exhaustive exploration of the possibilities of the medium, using a multiplicity of frames, and playing with the format of the page in a spectacular and surprising way, in addition to being one of the first comics to take advantage of the enormous potential of the color of the Sunday pages (sunday strips). With an intricate visual style, inspired by art nouveau, it stages a wide variety of characters and settings. McCay's work has also been related to later cultural movements, such as surrealism, due to the importance it gives to the dreamlike, going so far as to affirm that it is

a perfect show of credible fantasy thanks to the graphic virtuosity of a sketch artist. McCay's multifaceted talent made plausible an impossible world where the only existing logic was that of dreams.

Publication

The first appearance of the Little Nemo in Slumberland series in the New York Herald newspaper took place on October 15, 1905, and it continued to appear every Sunday, in pages complete in full color, until July 23, 1911. It should be taken into account that, unlike other comic classics, Little Nemo was not distributed by syndicates to other publications, which is why its popularity It was due to its circulation by a single newspaper in the New York area. However, his success was great, as witnessed by the large number of products derived from the character that were marketed at the time.

On September 3, 1911, Little Nemo was published in the New York American and other newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst, under the new title of In the Land of Wonderful Dreams. This new stage of the series lasted until July 26, 1914. Many years later, McCay would make Little Nemo reappear in the pages of the New York Herald between August 3, 1924 and August 26. December 1926, without achieving the success of the character's first period.

Robert McCay, son of the creator of Nemo and the model on which his father was inspired to create the character, tried to revive the comic on two occasions, in the 1930s and then in the 1940s, without success.

Current editions

The comic, and all of McCay's works, have been in the public domain since January 1, 2005. This is valid internationally.

In English, there are two compilations of all the Nemo material made in the period 1905-1914: the six-volume Fantagraphics Books edition (1989-93) and the one-volume Taschen edition, < b>Little Nemo 1905-1914 (ISBN 3-8228-6300-9).

In Spanish Norma Editorial published two volumes (1905-1907 and 1907-1908), but it was not until 2014 when the first comprehensive edition was available (1905-1914) by Ediciones Kraken. At the end of the 1970s the strip was published in Spanish by the monthly "El Expreso Imaginario" from Buenos Aires.

In Catalan there is an edition made by Els Llibres de Glauco, S.A. in 1984 within the Laertes Comic collection (currently Laertes, S.A. de Ediciones), which covers from October 1905 to September 1906 (ISBN 84-7612-011-7), although according to the ISBN database it is found currently out of stock.

Adaptations

The success of the comic led to the introduction of the character in other media, with the aim of making it commercially profitable: it appeared in series of postcards drawn by McCay, books, games, and children's clothing, as early as 1906. In 1908, the author Victor Herbert premiered a play about the character on Broadway.

The first film adaptation of Little Nemo was made by the author himself, Winsor McCay, in 1911, taking advantage of the popularity of the comic. It is a short film of only three minutes in length, half animated, half in real image, in which the author himself appears drawing his character, who stars in a very brief sketch.

The Frenchman Arnaud Sélignac directed the 1984 film Nemo, also known as Dream One produced by John Boorman. This is not an adaptation of McCay's work, but a very personal fantasy film freely inspired by it. In 1989, the Japanese Masami Hata and Masanori Hata released the anime film Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland, with the collaboration on the scripts, among others, of the French cartoonist Jean Giraud (Moebius) and the American writer Ray Bradbury.

There are also two video games developed by Capcom, one for the Nintendo Entertainment System based on McCay's work called Little Nemo: The Dream Master and another for arcade machines called simply NEMO, based in the plot of the 1989 film, both video games released in 1990.

The expansion of the main story to other stories, formats and platforms allows us to consider Little Nemo in Slumberland as one of the first transmedia experiences: It was "a story that included plays that incorporated new characters, some animated films (among them the pioneering Winsor McCay, the Famous Cartoonist of the N. Y. Herald and his Moving Comics), released in 1911), as well as video games and merchandising"

Tributes and parodies

Both due to its importance in the history of comics and the recognizable nature of its narrative structure, there are many comics that have been inspired by the adventures of Nemo. They can be cited:

• Miguel Angel Gallardo: The Dreams of the Child.

• Vittorio Giardino: Little Ego.

• Maurice Sendak: In the Night Kitchen (In the night kitchen).
• Ellen Duthie and Daniela Martagón: Little Remo in Pinchmeland (Small Remo in the Kingdom of Pelitezcame)

On October 15, 2012, the Google search engine pays tribute to him through an interactive doodle.

In the children's show Clarence (animated series) on Cartoon Network, in the episode 'Clarence's Millions', Clarence is shown waking up from a nightmare in the same characteristic way as little Nemo inside of the comics.

On April 7, 1978, the group Genesis released a musical album called And Then There Were Three. In it, there is a song called Scenes From Night's Dream, the lyrics of this song explicitly describe the comic.