The Comic Strips

Out of the many comics we were given to read, I have to say that the work of Winsor McCay, “Little Nemo to SlumberLand,” was gorgeous, compared to all of the other work. Dreams of the Rarebit was interesting work, but Slumberland was visually more appealing and creative in story telling. We looked at Krazy Kat, from the same era, and in comparison to Slumberland, it doesn’t even hold a candle to it. Krazy Kat was fun, and entertaining slapstick humor. It definitely has the charm and silly wonderment that is also found within Slumberland. However, I feel for these comics and story telling purposes, that as a reader, Slumberland just takes the cake. It's wild, it's creative, it's silly, and it's still all contained within the same narrative over and over for every page, which you would think would become slightly boring. The high colorized images and almost psychedelic ideas of dreaming within the story just reel you in because going to sleep is just one of life's most relate-able things, and we all wish we could have some of these fun colorful adventures as dreams. Its also simplified enough to be relate-able, which is something in last weeks comic, The Understanding of Comics. They talk about the reader identifying with the simplicity of a character. Slumberland is also very interesting because Little Nemo is showed to us as this little, cute, innocent kid just trying to get sleep. So, of course you want to know what happens to him. Where as Krazy Kat just doesn’t feel as relate-able in that sense.

            I feel like Disney’s animated film, Alice in Wonderland, took a lot of visual inspiration from these comics. Alice gets lost in a bright, colorful world and goes through similar odd, near-death, crazy situations. Story wise, its similar, too, because Alice wakes up from it all in her normal world with a mother figure there to comfort her. The biggest difference is Little Nemo goes through these psychedelic worlds on a nightly basis.