100 years ago Winsor McCay was destroying the Sunday funnies. Here's how he rocked New Year's 1910:
He could draw anything with his eyes closed; architecture, animals, clothes, vehicles, imaginary things, and his bionic imagination could totally take your lunch money and stuff you in a locker. He was constantly messing with perspective and scale and color, designing the page as a whole instead of a bunch of individual boxes. The conceit of the strip was that this kid Nemo had wicked dreams and at the end of each strip he'd wake up. But the next time he went to sleep the story would pick up where it left off. The story itself was incidental to McCay's drawing crazy stuff, and the dream angle just allowed him to make up any crazy stuff he wanted. Newspapers were huge back in the day and McCay was like "Oh, you're giving me a full page to go off on, and 60 bajillion people are going to read it every week? Okay I'm just going to get to work here and start blowing America's mind for the next 20 years." The strip ran in 360 newspapers. He smoked cigars and wore a hat while he drew. Hey Winsor McCay, are you cool?
These are all found online, so some of the scans are dodgy and they're not all in english. There are books available at
libraries and
bookstores.
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