Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog

In the late-90’s, Drawn! favourite Stuart Immonen (previously) wrote and illustrated a series of origin tales in the style of Winsor McCay. LiveJournaler CalamityJon has posted several here.

(Via Meeting McCay)

From the wonderful Meeting McCay blog:

Spring Lake, Michigan was the hometown of legendary cartoonist and animator Winsor McCay. McCay is internationally recognized and loved in cartooning and animation circles. Sadly, however, at the moment not many people in his hometown have even heard of him. We want to change that! This site serves as a source of information to Anyone wanting to learn more about the brilliant Winsor McCay: his life, his work, and the many ways he’s been honored. It also serves as a means to introduce McCay fans around the world to his hometown, Spring Lake, Michigan.

A three and a half minute animated pilot/demo of Winsor McCay’s classic comic, Little Nemo in Slumberland, by Yoshifumi Kondà of Studio Ghibli in 1984. It’s pretty spectacular the way the camera swoops through McCay’s universe; it left me wanting more.

Ah, and here’s Winsor McCay’s own 1910 animated film called, Little Nemo aka Winsor McCay, the Famous Cartoonist of the N.Y. Herald and his Moving Comics.

Also of interest:
Little Nemo in Slumberland, Volume 1 at Amazon
Drawn review of McCay’s Dream of the Rarebit Fiend

Winsor McCay may best be known for Little Nemo in Slumberland, but it’s in his earlier feature Dream of the Rarebit Fiend in which he first explored the fantastic world of dreams. Nemo, on the surface, seemed fanciful and romantic, but was always slightly dark. Described as “the most bizarre newspaper feature in American history”, Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, in which each episode illustrates an absurd, and often savage nightmare or phobia, was even darker.

The complete run of the comic, has been lovingly assembled into one massive volume by Ulrich Merkl. Before I held this giant book in my hands I was admittedly unfamiliar with Dream of the Rarebit Fiend but with its absurdist take on fear and anxiety, it has become an instant favourite. The comics are surreal, darkly comic, highly inventive, and simply beautiful.

To top it off, the book is a labour of love for Ulrich — all independently researched, financed, and published. More than just a collection of comics, the book is also rich with history, commentary, and countless examples of how the feature influenced subsequent comics, films, and pop culture. It’s limited to 1000 copies, and can be purchased directly from the Dream of the Rarebit Fiend website. Even cooler – the book comes with a DVD featuring not only the text of the book, but high resolution scans of all 821 known episodes of the comic, including many not reprinted in the book itself — all tagged with keywords for easy searching. How’s that for extensive?

Winsor McCay’s animated adaptation of his comic strip “Dream of the Rarebit Fiend” on google.

More examples and links to information about the life and work of McCay can be found on this recent post on metafilter.

In early January, a stranger called The Ohio State University Cartoon Research Library to say that she had found some old cartoons tucked in a stack of boxes that had been sitting in her family’s business for decades. She wanted to know if they were valuable. Lucy Shelton Caswell, Professor and Curator of the library, was skeptical since she often receives calls from people who have found items in grandma’s attic that end up having only sentimental value. The caller was insistent however, and said she was near to campus and would like to bring her find to the library for Caswell to see. An appointment was made for the next afternoon. The caller arrived with a battered cardboard folio. When it was opened, Caswell knew that this time a treasure had been uncovered. Inside were original, hand-colored drawings from Winsor McCay’s first comic strip, Tales of the Jungle Imps (1903). Up to that moment, no original drawings of the strip were known to exist for over a century.

Currently undergoing conservation treatment, five of the original drawings will be exhibited to the public in the Cartoon Research Library’s Reading Room Gallery June 15 – August 31, 2006, and a digital album of the strips is forthcoming on the library’s website.