Earlier this week, Google celebrated the life and legacy of cartoonist Winsor McCay with a six-panel animated doodle depicting their take on his infamous comic, Little Nemo in Cosmicland.
Published 107 years ago, on October 15, 1905, the story line can best be summed up in this excerpt, published in The Virginia Quarterly Review:
At the beginning of the last century, a little boy named Nemo was haunted by recurring nightmares of a bizarre and unruly land where the conventions of everyday life were turned upside down. By day, the boy was firmly lodged in the respectable and decorous world of middle-class white America.
Nighttime allowed Nemo, a shy seven-year-old whose hair became rumpled as he tossed and turned in bed, to escape into the fabulous and slightly sinister realm of Slumberland. Unlike the daytime republic governed by President Theodore Roosevelt, Slumberland was ruled over by King Morpheus, a Jove-like patriarch whose furrowed brow and Old Testament beard commanded respect.
Like Jonathan Swift’s Lemuel Gulliver or Lewis Carroll’s Alice, Nemo was a sober and innocent soul who traveled to a bizarre fantasyland which on closer inspection turned out to be a parody of the home that was left behind. Yet there is a significant difference between Nemo and his distinguished literary ancestors.
Winsor McCay’s work has left an indelible mark on comic book illustration and animation. Fortunately, the Internet Archive has a preserved copy of Little Nemo for you to torrent.
Get Little Nemo in Cosmicland: http://bit.ly/littlenemoia
More info: http://archive.org/details/LittleNemo1905-1914ByWinsorMccay
