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Below are two examples of another recurring theme strip, "Dream of the Rarebit Fiend". This centered around different characters each episode, but all afflicted with the same penchant for Welsh Rarebit (a melted cheese sauce with porter that's served over toast) before bedtime, which would then result in nightmares. This gave McCay the boundless world of fantasy to create whatever reality he felt like.
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Keeping with his "dream" idea, his true masterpiece in the comics field was "Little Nemo in Slumberland". The continuing adventures of a young boy named Nemo who visits a fantastic surreal world in his slumbers. Beautifully rendered and engrossing to view. It's amazing to think that this is what used to arrive every week in the Sunday Funnies when you compare it to things like "Garfield" today. Makes me want to dry heave.
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Winsor McCay was also interested in the fledgling film arts, most specifically animation of drawings. These films are extraordinary if you stop and think that, this is the era before cel animation...every drawing was completely redrawn for every frame...24 frames per second. And McCay did them single-handedly.
Amazing.
Here's an early one, even dramatizing his pledge to take on this herculean task and showing the work in progress. Animation sequence features Little Nemo and cast. This version is black and white, the original was hand colored, also by McCay.
Another amazing innovation was employed for his tour with his ground-breaking cartoon, "Gertie the Dinosaur".
Watch this with your imagination running. McCay would actually appear on stage while this was projected on the screen and he would interact with Gertie as she performed tricks. The pumpkin you see her catch was matched by one thrown by McCay. Now THAT's Show Bidness!
A Great combination of creativity, artistic talent, mechanical talent and patience. We won't see another like him.
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Amazing.
Here's an early one, even dramatizing his pledge to take on this herculean task and showing the work in progress. Animation sequence features Little Nemo and cast. This version is black and white, the original was hand colored, also by McCay.
The guy must never have slept!
McCay was also a showman and traveled the vaudeville circuit displaying his cartoons.
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A Great combination of creativity, artistic talent, mechanical talent and patience. We won't see another like him.
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