Little Nemo in Slumberland

Having never read any Little Nemo before, “Little Nemo in Slumberland” was an experience I went in to completely blind. The story was really very rewarding and I fully intend to read more Little Nemo when I get the chance. I read the few strips in the issue of Nemo: The Classic Comics Library available for download and this is what I garnered from the small taste I got.

The comics may be considered classic due to the time period in which they were created but the strips are groundbreaking and revolutionary more than old-fashioned, setting the tone of comics for years to come. Many of McCay's techniques in the Slumberland arc, such as that of changing the sizes and shapes of panels to reflect the action of the strip, have been used so much in modern comics that contemporary readers hardly think anything of it. However McCay was drawing his Little Nemo strip in a time when the idea of comics was merely in its infancy and most artists were trying to get a handle on simple square frames for use in narratives.

Each strip in the overall Slumberland series is one dream in and of itself and so all end with Nemo awaking, usually to the sound of his mother calling him or commenting on his behavior. Because of this each dream is highly abbreviated but even the single page limitation cannot contain the surreality and simple grace of McCay's lines as he explores the human psyche through the medium of Nemo. Overall Nemo is more of a secondary player, he has no real personality, instead being an observer of the fantastic things happening around him. This is more to allow the reader to be immersed in the fantasy of Slumberland and not get caught up in the personal situation of Nemo, whose name literally means “no one.”

In each strip of the Slumberland story McCay pushes and morphs the medium of comics into an effective means of telling intricate stories. He begins by using awkward captions under each numbered panel along with the speech bubbles coming from the characters within said panels to attempt to clarify the actions within. However he later realizes these captions are unnecessary and gets rid of them, allowing the panels to speak for themselves. This allows the reader to focus more on the actions of the story as opposed to being distracted by trying to follow a continuous verbal narrative. He also, as previously mentioned, gradually plays with the idea of changing the length and width of the panels to better illustrate scale and movement in the story. With each strip he adds something new to the vocabulary of comics, things that are still in use today, like breaking the fourth wall by having the character be aware of the artist as an entity and knowing that the world in which it exists is merely a fictional construct.

All in all Little Nemo as a whole, not just the Slumberland arc, is a brilliant experiment in the infancy of comics into the vast potential of a fledgling medium for the telling of brilliant tales.