Little Nemo: 1905-1914 (Evergreen) by Winsor McCay
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Book Reviews of Little Nemo: 1905-1914 (Evergreen)
Book Review: A Great Bargain
Summary: 4 Stars
One of the all time classic comic strips is reprinted here in a hardback color edition that publishes every Sunday strip from 1905-14. While the reproduction of some of the pages is slightly blurry and faded which takes away some from McKay's very detailed artwork, the sheer amount of material one gets here for such an inexpensive price makes this a must have if you are at all interested in comic strips. Get this and discover why McKay is regarded as one of the masters.Book Review: Nice collection!
Summary: 4 Stars
After having only had the opportunity to read a handful of Little Nemo strips in the Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics (another great book), I was happy to find that this was available. Even though the size of the pages are smaller than the original newspaper prints, I think this collection is definitely worth it, particularly since it's a fair price for so much material.Book Review: Imperfect Classic
Summary: 3 Stars
This collection of Little Nemo comics contains every Little Nemo in Slumberland and In the Land of Wonderful Dreams strip in a nice hardcover book. While bigger than a standard comic book (about the size as one of DC's "Absolute" editions), the pages are actually smaller than original 16x20 newspaper pages. For the price, however, it's hard to beat this book.
Little Nemo follows the adventures of Nemo as he first tries to make his way to Slumberland to play with the princess and his later adventures in Slumberland, across the world, and even Mars.
The comics are an exercise in surreality. Stories where buildings come to life, Nemo meets Father Time, or the characters get stuck in lands of giants/little people are common.
Beyond the content, McCay sometimes plays with panel layouts and even breaks the 4th wall once or twice. His strength, however, lays in mundane things like scale and perspective, which he uses to heighten the surrealness of the stories. McCay can also draw glorious architecture based on either the real world or firmly embedded in fantasy.
The weak point of Little Nemo is the story telling. After the fantastical set of comics depicting Nemo's adventures as he gets to Slumberland and meets the princess, McCay tends to get into ruts with his stories. There's about 50 comics showing Nemo and crew venturing around the USA and taking a tour of major cities in America and Canada that ends up being little more than statistics being recited to the reader. The 100 or so In the Land... comics mostly follow one of two story arcs (Dr. Pill tries to run away from Flip; Flip causes trouble or Imp plays a prank; Flip causes trouble). Combined with outdated story telling techniques (the comics are over 100 years old, after all) lead to stretches of tedium.
It should also be pointed out that there are a lot of things in the books that, while acceptable at the time of them being published, would be considered racist by today's standards. Most notably is Imp's stereotypical character design, though there are also instances of black face, racial slurs, and (strangely) a single comic ranting against women's suffrage.
Little Nemo is a classic comic for a good reason, but go into the book aware that it is written for a different time and isn't a breeze to read like the latest X-Men comic is.
Book Review: Important for Reference and Historical purposes
Summary: 3 Stars
This is an excellent collection to own.
The visuals in Little Nemo are excellent, leaps and bounds above what most filmmakers can do, even with technology and money.
And Little Nemo was probably one of the ten most important comic strips of the early part of the 20th century.
And this is a reasonably affordable edition that contains all (or at least claims to contain all) of the strip.
That being said, I'm not sure that Little Nemo is really something that would hold the interest of a lot of contemporary readers, comic and otherwise. This was kind of a hard thing for me to write because it is an important work in terms of comic history.
If you do plan on buying this, think of it as a reference book or a picture book (when I bought this at the comic store, the employee said it really existed solely for the art and, history aside, I'm not entirely sure I disagree with him). It is incredibly useful in that regard. In terms of an actual plot or characterization, don't really go in with high expectations. This is an attractive volume worth having on a shelf and consulting every few months but it isn't something that you are probably not going to read cover to cover.
Little Nemo has little to speak of in terms of plot or characterization. And, like the Walt and Skeezix collection, racial stereotypes come in occasionally, something that would probably have flown in 1905-1914 but something that is unacceptable now (though I regret that the dislike of such things often comes at the expense of a reasoned view of the historical context).
And I really wish that I could give this a better review due to its historical importance. Overall, it gets three stars but with a qualifier of some kind.