Dutiful Dreamer


Buy the new book, "Beaucoup Arlo & Janis!"Today's "Arlo & Janis!"
Here’s another Sunday from 10 years ago. So, “Little Nemo in Slumberland” would be 110 years old this year. Winsor McCay was one of the greatest comic strip artists of all time, not to mention one of the first. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s been downhill ever since, but no one has ever surpassed McCay in drawing, scripting, dialog, creativeness, pacing… the list goes on. “Little Nemo” only ran on Sundays, beginning in The New York Herald in 1905. In the day, Sunday funnies were the new technological marvel. Seriously. Many cartoonists then were little more than overworked and underpaid cogs in a giant newspaper machine, but the popular ones such as McCay and Rudolph Dirks and Richard Outcault became wealthy celebrities. Outcault pretty much invented the art form in 1895 with “Down in Hogan’s Alley” and later invented the modern comic strip with “Buster Brown.”