I’ve spent hours adoring the first volume of The Complete Little Nemo in Slumberland by Winsor McKay instead of grading my Seniors’ research papers or writing my own final paper for my theory class. And who wouldn’t want to get absorbed and distracted by McKay’s lush and fantastical world? It’s both sad and silly that the comics page nowadays has been compressed into a minute fraction of the massive broadsides that used to grace each Sunday edition of the paper. Calvin & Hobbes creator Bill Watterson has lamented the incredible shrinking comics page in the introductions to several of the C & H collections, and Art Spiegelman paid tribute to the glory days of the broadside in In the Shadow of No Towers. Still, even as comics creators draw attention to this downsizing, it seems that the trend in newspapers will be to continue to dwarf creativity, to literally minimize (pop) art. This marks a serious social regression over the past century. But why? If I knew that something on the scale of the broadside below–both in terms of physical size and imagination–was waiting for me each Sunday, I’d be excited to get a subscription to the local rag. For now, enjoy this episode of Little Nemo (image links to a full page, but you still might need to use the magnifying glass!)–
Biblioklept 