Power Panels 5

I didn't grow up reading superhero comics; I learned my love of the medium from the Sunday funnies. I grew up reading The Far Side, Bloom County, Peanuts, and, of course, Calvin and Hobbes. I often read within these cartoons the characters complaining about the shrinking space in the newspaper comics page. In fact, Bill Watterson's rebellions against the restraints put on the comics format are part of the reason I admire the man so much. Still, growing up in that age where newspaper comics had already been diminished so much, I don't think I realized what I was missing.

Then, a couple of months ago, I discovered Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland.


I'd actually heard of the character as a kid - there was a video game made to correspond with an animated flick I don't think I ever saw, so I knew that something LIKE this existed. Eventually, I learned that Little Nemo was a comic strip from the early twentieth century. Beyond that, though, I never thought to look in to the character much.

I've since read several cartoonists who cite Winsor McCay's work as an inspiration. Eventually, I decided to check a book of the comics out from the library. I feel confident in saying that there's nothing else quite like Winsor McCay that sees print today.

McCay was given a lot of space to tell a brief story, and he USED that space incredibly effectively. He painted larger-than-life pictures of strange landscapes and peculiar creatures, the likes of which are only encountered in dreams. The lettering is less than perfect, sometimes bordering on the illegible, but, in the end, I never really cared what any of the characters were saying. I only wanted to see what dreams Little Nemo had, and I was seldom disappointed.


I've read similar attempts at using broadsheet-sized pages in contemporary comic storytelling (like in DC Comics' recent attempt - which WAS actually pretty good), but none of them come close to using that much space quite as masterfully as Winsor McCay did. Little Nemo is at its most awe-inspiring when its main characters are exploring peculiar dreamscapes. As you can see in the comic above, the panels in the comic aren't simply laid out from left to right, but they fold and warp around the central fantastical image, creating a kind of warped, surreal world.

It makes me wonder what we miss out on in today's comic environment with only tiny, six-panel Sunday strips to look forward to each week.