Introduction
Winsor McCay (né entre 1867 et 1871 selon les sources) à Spring Lake - mort le 26 juillet 1934 à Brooklyn) est un auteur de bande
dessinée et un réalisateur de films d'animation américain.
Créateur de Little Nemo, il est considéré comme l'un des plus importants dessinateurs de bandes dessinées.
Son œuvre a influencé de nombreux dessinateurs comme Moebius, Hayao Miyazaki ou encore Frank Quitely.
Il est aussi un pionnier du cinéma d'animation :
son dessin animé Gertie le dinosaure est le premier à mettre en scène un personnage unique à la personnalité attachante,
ce qui influence les premiers films de Walt Disney, Max Fleischer ou Osamu Tezuka.
La création d'une technique de narration
Des premières planches de Little Nemo parues en 1905 à celles publiées en 1907, l'évolution de la technique de narration de McCay
est flagrante.
Les premières histoires dominicales de Nemo sont présentées sous forme de planche divisée en cases rectangulaires et régulières.
Sous chacune d'elles, un numéro de chronologie et un commentaire complétant l'action qui s'y déroule.
Ces commentaires sont prédominants sur les rares phylactère présents dans la planche.
Au fur et à mesure des publications, les commentaires diminuent au profit des bulles de dialogue, les numéros de chronologie
s'insèrent dans l'image et les compositions de planches se débrident avec des cases qui soulignent l'intensité du récit.
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Winsor McCay
Jeunesse
Enfance
Le lieu et la date de naissance exacte de Winsor McCay sont incertains.
Il déclara être né à Spring Lake dans le Michigan en 1871, mais sa pierre tombale indique 1869, et les archives du
recensement indiquent qu'il serait né au Canada en 1867.
Son nom de baptême est Zenas Winsor McKay, en l'honneur de l'employeur de son père :
Zenas G. Winsor.
Formation
Winsor McCay a très tôt une vocation pour le dessin. À l'âge de 16 ans, sous l'influence de son professeur de dessin
John Goodison, il découvre et développe ses qualités pour les perspectives architecturales originales et riches
en effets inédits.
Très vite, il utilise ses dons et se lance dans une carrière itinérante de peintre publicitaire et de décorateur.
À 17 ans, il se fixe à Chicago et poursuit ses études artistiques.
Il est particulièrement sensible aux constructions réalisées pour l'exposition universelle, et aux gratte-ciel
qui jaillissent des décombres de l'incendie de 1871.
À 19 ans, il est déjà un peintre et décorateur apprécié et expérimenté, si bien qu'il est employé par le Morton's Dime
Museum de Cincinnati, musée d'histoire naturelle, d'ethnographie où se produisent des forains.
Pendant une dizaine d'années, de 1886 à 1896, Winsor McCay produit des milliers de dessins pour les parcs d'attraction
(Wonderland) qui sont alors en vogue aux États-Unis.
Il est fort probable qu'il exerce également le métier de dessinateur forain :
virtuose au travail, il impressionne les visiteurs.
En 1891 il se marie avec Maud Leonore Dufour (alors âgée de 14 ans).
En 1897, il commence à travailler pour la presse locale de Cincinnati et Life pour lequel il réalise caricatures et
dessins de science-fiction.
Il est repéré par James Gordon Bennett propriétaire des très respectés New York Herald et Evening Telegram qui l'embauche.
McCay s'installe à New York en octobre 1903.
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Sammy
Petit Sammy et l'amateur de fondue au Chester
Pour James Gordon Bennett, McCay, réalise des planches pour les suppléments illustrés des journaux du dimanche.
Dans Le petit Sammy éternue (1904), les éternuements du petit Sammy causent dévastations et catastrophes dans un univers
ordonné, de même les cris stridents de Henrietta l’affamée (1905) provoquent la terreur.
Mais c'est avec Cauchemars de l'amateur de fondue au Chester publié dans le Evening Telegram sous le pseudonyme de Silas
et Little Nemo in Slumberland publié dans le New York Herald que Winsor McCay atteint le sommet de son art et peut
se plonger dans ses thèmes favoris :
le pays des songes, illusions, architectures utopiques, onirisme…
Les deux strips se répondent l'un l'autre.
Les Cauchemars de l'amateur de fondue au Chester développent la métaphore négative du cauchemar, les strips sont ancrés
dans la réalité du New York des années 1900, et abordent les thèmes inhérents à la vie quotidienne urbaine et aux
inquiétudes causées par la société industrielle et urbaine naissante.
Les Cauchemars de l'amateur de fondue au Chester parlent des désirs et angoisses des New-yorkais face à la modernité.
Texte © Wikipédia
Little Nemo
Little Nemo
À partir du 24 septembre 1905 Winsor McCay crée Little Nemo in Slumberland pour le New York Herald de J. Pulitzer.
Cette bande dessinée utilise systématiquement des phylactères, et W. McCay abandonne la mise en page classique des strips
en créant des cases de dimensions variables selon les besoins du récit.
Les couleurs jouent un rôle important car McCay utilise des couleurs entre tons pastels et couleurs pures dans un style
art nouveau1. W. McCay s’adresse avec cette œuvre à un public adulte comme il le faisait déjà en 1904 avec Little Sammy
Sneeze qui détruit le cadre de sa case en éternuant.
Little Nemo in Slumberland développe la métaphore positive du rêve. Les couleurs y sont vives, les décors fantastiques
avec des perspectives riches d'illusions et d'inventions graphiques, le monde onirique de McCay y est poussé
à son paroxysme.
Little Nemo in Slumberland propose une évasion aux pays des merveilles, au pays des distractions féeriques,
au pays des inventions du génial démiurge McCay. Little Nemo in Slumberland rencontre un grand succès public.
Même si chacune des planches dominicales se termine par la même chute (Little Nemo tombe de son lit et se réveille),
les rêves se suivent et forment une intrigue qui se développe d'une aventure à l'autre, les personnages changent au fur
à mesure de leurs aventures rêvées. Little Nemo in Slumberland est ainsi la première bande dessinée à adopter la pratique
de la suite feuilletonesque.
Lorsque McCay est débauché par le groupe de presse du tout puissant William Randolph Hearst en 1911 Little Nemo est
rebaptisé In the Land of Wonderful Dreams et la série continue jusqu'en 1914. McCay poursuit ses réflexions sur la société
contemporaine sous divers titres dont Day Dreams dans le New York Evening Journal.
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Gertie
Gertie
À partir de 1909, Winsor McCay délaisse un peu la bande dessinée pour se consacrer à un nouveau média :
le dessin animé pour y adapter les aventures de son personnage fétiche, Little Nemo.
Comme Émile Cohl à la même époque, il travaille sur papier (le cellulo n'existe pas encore) et réalise tous les dessins
de sa propre main.
Avec Gertie le dinosaure premier dinosaure de l'histoire du cinéma, Winsor McCay invente le personnage du dessin animé
moderne :
un personnage central doté d'une personnalité propre et attachante.
La science de la perspective permet à McCay de rendre parfaitement les effets en 3D.
Ce film sera cité en exemple lors des balbutiements des dessins animés par ordinateur dans les années 1970.
Il ne manque que le son au film.
Qu'à cela ne tienne, McCay reprend le chemin des forains de ses années de formation et présente lui-même ses films
à travers l'Amérique; durant les projections, véritable show man, il fait en direct les bruitages sonores et participe
même au film (il donne lui-même des ordres à Gertie qui présente un numéro de music-hall et participe à l'intrigue
au point d'intégrer le film à la fin).
Le film est également riche en illusions d'optiques. Après la Première Guerre mondiale, McCay réalise des petits films
qui reprennent des gags des Cauchemars de l'amateur de fondue au Chester.
Mais il est rattrapé par les progrès de l'industrie cinématographique et, isolé et indépendant des studios, il doit
renoncer au cinéma d'animation.
Il continue cependant ses collaborations avec les journaux de William Randolph Hearst pour lesquels il réalise
des illustrations et des caricatures sur les thèmes d'actualité.
Parallèlement, McCay travaille anonymement pour la publicité.
Il meurt brusquement le 26 juillet 1934.
Texte © Wikipédia
Oeuvres
Principales œuvres
Bandes dessinées
• The Tale of the Jungle Imps (1903)
• Le petit Sammy éternue (1904-1906)
• Cauchemars de l'amateur de fondue au Chester (1904-1913)
• Little Nemo in Slumberland (1905-1914)
• Henrietta l’affamée (1905)
• L'Homme à la valise (1905-1910)
• Pauvre Jake (1909-1911)
Films d'animation
• Little Nemo (1911)
• Winsor McCay, the Famous Cartoonist of the N.Y. Herald and His Moving Comics (1911)
• How a Mosquito Operates (Comment opèrent les moustiques) (1912)
• Gertie the Dinosaur (1914)
• The Sinking of the Lusitania (le naufrage du Lusitania) (1918)
• Le Rêve de l'amateur de fondue au Chester (1921)
• Le Rêve de l'amateur de fondue au Chester: The Pet (1921)
• Le Rêve de l'amateur de fondue au Chester: The Flying House (1921)
• Le Rêve de l'amateur de fondue au Chester: Le Vaudeville des bestioles (1921)
• Gertie on Tour (1921)
• Flip's Circus (1921)
• The Centaurs (1921)
• The Midsummer's Nightmare (1922)
Texte © Wikipédia
Oeuvres
Sammy
Introduction
Little Sammy Sneeze was a comic strip by American cartoonist Winsor McCay.
In each episode the titular Sammy sneezed himself into an awkward or disastrous predicament. The strip ran from July 24,
1904 until December 9, 1906 in the New York Herald, where McCay was on the staff.
It was McCay's first successful comic strip; he followed it with Dream of the Rarebit Fiend later in 1904, and his
best-known strip Little Nemo in Slumberland in 1905.
In contrast to the imaginative layouts of Little Nemo, Sammy Sneeze was confined to a rigid grid and followed a
strict formula: Sammy's sneeze would build frame by frame, contorting the protagonist's face until it erupted in the
second-to-last panel. In the closing panel he suffered the consequences—often a kick in the rear.
McCay's artwork was finely detailed and highly accurate in its persistent repetition.
He delved into modernist experimentation, shattering fourth walls and even the strip's panel borders.
The panel-by-panel buildup displayed McCay's concern with depicting motion, a concern that was to culminate in his
pioneering animated films of the 1910s, such as Gertie the Dinosaur (1914).
Premise
The strip follows a simple concept:
in each weekly instalment, Sammy sneezes with such power that it wreaked havoc with his surroundings.
His sneeze builds until its release with the onomatopoeia "Chow!" in the second-to-last panel.
In the last panel he suffers the consequences[1]—being driven away by one of his victims, or often receiving a kick
in the rear.
Background
Winsor McCay worked in dime museums in Cincinnati from 1891, where he drew posters and advertisements.
His ability to draw quickly with great accuracy drew crowds when he painted advertisements in public.
He began working as a newspaper cartoonist full-time in 1898, and also freelanced for humor magazines.
McCay moved to New York City in 1903 to work for the New York Herald, leaving behind his first comic strip,
A Tale of the Jungle Imps by Felix Fiddle.
From January 1904 he created a number of other short-lived strips, before finding popular success with Sammy Sneeze
that July.
In addition to his editorial cartooning, in 1905 he was producing five regular comic strips:
Little Sammy Sneeze, Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, Little Nemo in Slumberland, Hungry Henrietta, and A Pilgrim's Progress.<
Little Sammy Sneeze was one of three strips (with Little Nemo and Hungry Henrietta) that starred a child protagonist;
this may have been under the influence of Richard F. Outcault's popular Yellow Kid and Buster Brown strips.
Style and analysis
The strip was almost always laid out in a rigid grid:
Sammy's sneeze builds in the first four panels to a release in the fifth and consequences for Sammy in the sixth.
This is in contrast to the great variety of panel sizes and layouts displayed in McCay's earlier strip The Jungle Imps,
and later much more prominently in Little Nemo.
Sammy was inarticulate, making little more than mouth noises; the adults around him conversed, but in a
monotonous manner that did not invite careful reading.
Neither did he learn from his foibles nor grow as a character.
Sammy and McCay's other child protagonists differ from those of Outcault and other popular cartoonists,
such as Rudolph Dirks and his rambunctious, pranking Katzenjammer Kids.
Sammy takes no pleasure in the trouble he causes; rather, as the strip's header declares: "He just simply couldn't
stop it."
On occasion his sneezes have positive consequences, as when he frightens a stubborn mule to move out of the way of
an oncoming train, or foils a group of kidnappers.
Though not to the degree applied to Little Nemo, McCay's backgrounds were heavily detailed, and he drew monotonous,
repetitive images with great accuracy; McCay later applied these skills to his animation work.
The backgrounds remain the same from panel to panel, while passersby unwittingly pass Sammy during his buildup.
During the buildup McCay presents people going about their lives; to comics historian Thierry Smolderen,
"The reading of these pages is most enjoyable not in the repetitive buildup of the sneeze itself, but in the beautifully
varied and fleshed out description of the human activities that are so violently interrupted by the explosion."
McCay took the visual ideas he experimented with in Little Sammy Sneeze and Dream of the Rarebit Fiend (also 1904) and
more fully explored them when he began Little Nemo the following year.
While the technical dexterity Little Nemo draws the greatest share of attention among McCay's works, Katherine Roeder
finds the formally lower-key Sammy Sneeze "tested the limits of visual representation and demonstrated the comic strip's
potential as a vehicle for modernist experimentation".
McCay was fond of breaking the fourth wall,[19] a well-known example of which is the September 24, 1905,
episode: the gag unfolds according to formula, culminating in the destruction of the very panel borders of the comic
strip itself.
The strip may pay homage to Fred Ott's Sneeze—a filmstrip of the progression of a man sneezing.
The photographs appeared in Harper's Magazine in 1884 and were well known.
As in the film, and unusual for the Sammy Sneeze strip, the September 24 episode has a closeup of the sneezer against
a blank background, and Sammy's gestures echo those of Ott.
McCay was concerned with depicting the seldom-perceived minutiae of movement, though his was not the scientific
curiosity found in the chronophotography of Eadweard Muybridge, Étienne-Jules Marey, and Georges Demenÿ. McCay
emphasizes the lack of order and irrational unpredictability of the human body.
McCay's concern was to culminate in his pioneering animated films such as Gertie the Dinosaur (1914).
Comic strips as early as A. B. Frost's incorporated the repetition of backgrounds inspired by chronophotography,
and by the time of Sammy Sneeze had become a standard comic-strip trope—one comics historian Thierry Smolderen suggests
McCay may have deliberately parodied.
Though the story of mischievous children and the trouble they caused was typical of comic strips of the day,
in contrast to such other popular strips as The Katzenjammer Kids and Buster Brown, the havoc Sammy wreaked was
unintentional. To Roeder, the humor at the expense of both the adults and the child likely appealed to a broad range
of readers, and may have broadened the appeal of comic strips to conservative middle-class audiences.
These audiences may have seen the inevitable consequences for Sammy as a restoration of a natural social order, one
that was left rent asunder in other comic strips.
Sammy is given an unappealing character design and personality, with dull features and expression that do not invite
the reader's sympathy;[25] his character is never developed.[26] Similar to Buster Brown, Sammy dresses in a
dress shirt, lace collar, and cravat.
This style associated with middle-class aspirations and popularized toward the end of the 19th century in the wake
of the success of Little Lord Fauntleroy.
By the time Sammy Sneeze had begun the style was a subject of ridicule; in an age where respectable society went to
lengths to avoid drawing attention to bodily functions, it emphasized the humorous contortions of Sammy's face as
he built up toward his sneeze.
His sneeze could also tear down other symbols of the middle-class, such as an expansive department store display
of goods at Christmas.
The strip's header declared to each side of the title "He just simply couldn't stop" and "He never knew when it was
coming", and never strayed from the basic formula of build-up, release, and consequence.
McCay was to make use of such framing devices throughout his career, as in Little Nemo where the reader could rely
on the protagonist awakening in the closing panel each week.
Scott Bukatman and Thierry Smolderen saw the monotony of Sammy Sneeze as an attempt by McCay at parody —one that,
in Smolderen's words, "chuckles at the absurdity of ... doing the same thing ad nauseam".
Publication
The first Little Sammy Sneeze book collection appeared in 1906.
Little Sammy Sneeze began on July 24, 1904, in the New York Herald, where McCay had joined the staff in 1903.
It ran in color until partway through 1905, and came to an end December 9, 1906.
McCay joined William Randolph Hearst's newspapers in 1911,[33] and Sammy made a reappearance in them on
February 4, 1912, in a one-off strip titled "All at Once—Kerchoo!—He Sneezed" in.
During Sammy's run, McCay's strip Hungry Henrietta strip tended to appear on the same date as Sammy Sneeze,
including every Henrietta strip that ran in 1905.[34] One crossover strip[c] ends with Henrietta eating candy
that Sammy has sneezed onto the floor.
In 1906, a compilation volume of the strips appeared—not only in the United States, but in France where the Herald's
publisher James Gordon Bennett Jr. was based.
Sammy was one of the earliest American strips to appear in Europe.
Sunday Press Books released a deluxe 11 in × 16 in (28 cm × 41 cm) landscape-format hardcover volume called Little
Sammy Sneeze:
The Complete Color Sunday Comics 1904–1905 in 2007.
On the reverse of each Sammy Sneeze page appears a non-Sammy Sneeze strip—the complete run of McCay's The Story
of Hungry Henrietta, as well as selections from John Prentiss Benson's The Woozlebeasts, and Gustave Verbeek's
The Upside-Downs of Little Lady Lovekins and Old Man Muffaroo and The Terrors of the Tiny Tads.
These bonus strips appear in monochrome to Sammy Sneeze's color, as newspapers at the time normally printed color
on only one side of the page.
Legacy
After a two-and-a-half-year run, McCay dropped the strip, while continuing to work on Dream of the Rarebit Fiend,
Pilgrim's Progress, and his best-known work, Little Nemo.
It has since mostly been remembered as a precursor to McCay's better-known strips, receiving little attention itself
outside of a few key strips.
The strip's concept was later picked up by the creators of characters such as Sneezly Seal and Li'l Sneezer.
Texte © Wikipédia
Rarebit
Introduction
Dream of the Rarebit Fiend is a newspaper comic strip by American cartoonist Winsor McCay, begun September 10, 1904.
It was McCay's second successful strip, after Little Sammy Sneeze secured him a position on the cartoon staff of the
New York Herald.
Rarebit Fiend appeared in the Evening Telegram, a newspaper published by the Herald.
For contractual reasons, McCay signed the strip with the pen name "Silas".
The strip had no continuity or recurring characters, but a recurring theme: a character has a nightmare or other bizarre dream,
usually after eating a Welsh rarebit—a cheese-on-toast dish.
The character awakens in the closing panel and regrets having eaten the rarebit.
The dreams often reveal unflattering sides of the dreamers' psyches—their phobias, hypocrisies, discomforts, and
dark fantasies.
This was in great contrast to the colorful fantasy dreams in McCay's signature strip Little Nemo, which he began in 1905.
Whereas children were Nemo's target audience, McCay aimed Rarebit Fiend at adults.
The popularity of Rarebit Fiend and Nemo led to McCay gaining a contract in 1911 with William Randolph Hearst's chain of
newspapers with a star's salary.
His editor there thought McCay's highly skilled cartooning "serious, not funny", and had McCay give up comic strips in favor
of editorial cartooning.
McCay revived the strip in 1923–1925 as Rarebit Reveries, of which few examples have survived.
A number of film adaptations of Rarebit Fiend have appeared, including Edwin S. Porter's live-action Dream of a Rarebit Fiend
in 1906, and four pioneering animated films by McCay himself:
How a Mosquito Operates in 1912, and 1921's Bug Vaudeville, The Pet, and The Flying House.
The strip is said to have anticipated a number of recurring ideas in popular culture, such as marauding giant beasts
damaging cities—as later popularized by King Kong and Godzilla.
Overview
Winsor McCay first produced Dream of the Rarebit Fiend in 1904, a year before the dream romps of his Little Nemo and a
full generation before the artists of the Surrealist movement unleashed the unconscious on the public.
The strip had no recurring characters, but followed a theme: after eating a Welsh rarebit, the day's protagonist would be
subject to the darker side of his psyche.
Typically, the strip would begin with an absurd situation which became more and more absurd until the Fiend—the
dreamer—awakened in the final panel.
Some situations were merely silly: elephants falling from the ceiling, or two women's mink coats having a fight.
Other times, they could be more disturbing:
characters finding themselves dismembered, buried alive from a first-person perspective or a child's mother being planted
and becoming a tree.
In some strips the Fiend was a spectator watching fantastic or horrible things happen to someone close to themself.
The protagonists are typically, but not always, of America’s growing middle-class urban population whom McCay subjects to
fears of public humiliation, or loss of social esteem or respectability, or just the uncontrollably weird nature of being.
Rarebit Fiend was the only one of McCay's strips in which he approached social or political topics, or dealt with
contemporary life.
He addressed religious leaders, alcoholism, homelessness, political speeches, suicide, fashion, and other topics,
whereas his other strips were fantasy or had seemingly vague, timeless backgrounds.
The strip referenced contemporary events such as the 1904 election of Theodore Roosevelt; the recently built Flatiron Building
(1902) and St. Regis Hotel (1904) in New York City; and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05.
The rarebit is a dish typically made with rich cheese thinned with ale and served melted on toast with cayenne and mustard
mixed in.
McCay used it despite its innocuousness—cultural theorist Scott Bukatman states rarebit was not the sort of dish a person
would associate with having nightmares.
McCay's most famous character, Little Nemo, first appeared in the first year of Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, on December 10,
1904.
In 1905, McCay had Nemo appear in his own strip in the New York Herald.
In comparison to Little Nemo, the artwork of the Rarebit Fiend strips had minimal backgrounds, and were usually done from a
static perspective with the main characters often in a fixed position.
The content of Rarebit Fiend played a much bigger role than it did in Little Nemo, whose focus was on beautiful visuals.
The stories were self-contained, whereas the Nemo story continued from week to week.
The dreams in Nemo were aimed at children, but Rarebit Fiend had adult-oriented subjects—social embarrassment, fear of dying
or going insane, and so on. Some of the dreams in both strips were wish-fulfillment fantasies.
Unlike most comic strips from the time, Rarebit Fiend is not (directly) humorous or escapist.
The strips highlight readers' darker selves—hypocrisies, deceitfulness, phobias, and discomfort.
They offer often biting social commentary and show marital, money, and religious matters in a negative light.
McCay had an interest in pushing formal boundaries, and playful self-referentiality plays a role in many of the strips;
characters sometimes refer to McCay's alter-ego "Silas" or to the reader.
Though frequent in Rarebit Fiend, this self-referentiality does not appear in McCay's other strips.
In contrast to the skilled artwork, the lettering in the dialogue balloons, as in McCay's other work, was awkward and
could approach illegibility, especially in reproductions, where the artwork has normally been greatly reduced in size.
McCay seemed to show little regard for the dialogue balloons, their content, and their placement in the composition.
They tend to contain repetitive monologues expressing the increasing distress of the speakers, and show that McCay's gift
was in the visual and not the verbal.
Background
McCay began cartooning in the 1890s and had a prolific output published in magazines and newspapers.
He became known for his ability to draw quickly, a talent he often employed during chalk talks on the vaudeville stage
(alongside the likes of Harry Houdini and W. C. Fields).
Before Dream of the Rarebit Fiend and Little Nemo, McCay had shown an interest in the topic of dreams.
Some of his earlier works, numbering at least 10 regular comic strips, had titles such as Daydreams and It Was Only a Dream.
McCay's were not the first dream-themed comic strips to be published: McCay's employer, the New York Herald, had printed
at least three such strips, beginning with Charles Reese's Drowsy Dick in 1902.
Psychoanalysis and dream interpretation had begun to enter the public consciousness with the 1900 publication of Freud's
Interpretation of Dreams.
McCay first proposed a strip in which a tobacco fiend finds himself at the North Pole, unable to secure a
cigarette and a light.
In the last panel he awakens to find it a dream. The Herald asked McCay to make a series of the strip, but with a
Welsh rarebit theme instead of tobacco, and McCay complied.
The strip appeared in a Herald subsidiary, the Evening Telegram, and the Herald's editor required McCay to use a pseudonym
for the strip work to keep it separate from his other work.
McCay signed Rarebit Fiend strips as "Silas", a name he borrowed from a neighborhood garbage cart driver.
After switching to William Randolph Hearst's New York American newspaper in 1911, McCay dropped the "Silas" pseudonym and
signed his work with his own name.
McCay married in 1891,[1] and the marriage was not a happy one. According to McCay biographer John Canemaker, McCay depicts
marriage in Rarebit Fiend as "a minefield of hypocrisy, jealousy, and misunderstanding".
McCay was a short man, barely five feet (150 cm) tall.
He was dominated by his wife, who stood as tall as he was.
Images of small, shy men dominated by their taller or fatter wives appear frequently in Rarebit Fiend.
Gigantism, with characters overwhelmed by rapidly growing elements, was another recurring motif, perhaps as compensation
on McCay's part for a sense of smallness.
McCay's brother Arthur had been put in a mental asylum, which may have inspired the themes of insanity that are common
in the strip.
Despite the strip's bleak view, McCay's work was so popular that William Randolph Hearst hired him in 1911 with
a star's salary.
Hearst editor Arthur Brisbane deemed McCay's work "serious, not funny", and had the cartoonist give up his comic strips
(including Rarebit Fiend and Nemo) to work full-time illustrating editorials.
Influences
Scholars such as Claude Moliterni, Ulrich Merkl, Alfredo Castelli, and others have hunted down what they believe to have influenced McCay's work on Dream of the Rarebit Fiend. Among the possible influences are Edward Lear's popular The Book of Nonsense (1870),[31] Gelett Burgess' The Burgess Nonsense Book (1901), Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) (particularly the pool of tears scene, which seems related to the flood of sweat in one early Rarebit Fiend strip[32]), and a variety of dream cartoons and illustrations that appeared in various periodicals McCay was likely familiar with.[4]
The most probable immediate influence on the strip was Welsh Rarebit Tales (1902) by Harle Oren Cummins. Cummins stated he drew inspiration for this collection of 15 science fiction stories from nightmares brought on by eating Welsh rarebit and lobster—making further likely the influence, as several post-Herald strips from 1911 and 1912 were titled Dream of a Lobster Fiend.[33]
Other influences that have been established include H. G. Wells, L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan (1904), Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio (1883), Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and the Engineer's Thumb (1889), Henryk Sienkiewicz's Quo Vadis (1896), Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), and Mark Twain's The 1,000,000 Pound Bank-Note (1893).[34]
McCay never acknowledged the influence of Sigmund Freud, whose The Interpretation of Dreams had been published in 1900. According to McCay scholar Ulrich Merkl, it is likely McCay was aware of the Viennese doctor's theories, as they had been widely reported and talked about in the New York newspaper world McCay was a part of.[3
Publishing
Dream of the Rarebit Fiend was McCay's longest running comic strip. He made over 300 more Rarebit Fiend episodes than he
made of the more famous Little Nemo.[36] The first strip appeared on September 10, 1904, in the New York Herald, a few months
after the first appearance of McCay's Little Sammy Sneeze.
It was McCay's second successful newspaper strip, after Sammy Sneeze landed him a position on the cartooning staff of the
Herald.
Dream of the Rarebit Fiend ran in the Evening Telegram, which was published by the Herald at the time.
The strip appeared two to three times a week.
It typically filled a quarter of a newspaper page on weekdays, and half a page on Saturdays.
The strip normally appeared in black-and-white, but 29 of the strips appeared in color throughout 1913, run weekly in the
Herald.
These were strips drawn between 1908 and 1911 which the Evening Telegram had neglected to print.
McCay sometimes encouraged readers to submit dream ideas, to be sent care of the Herald to "Silas the Dreamer".
McCay acknowledged the submissions he accepted with a "thanks to ..." on the strip beside his own signature.
Among those credited were science fiction pioneer Hugo Gernsback.
Dream of the Rarebit Fiend initial run continued until 1911.
It appeared again in various papers between 1911 and 1913 under other titles, such as Midsummer Day Dreams and It
Was Only a Dream.
From 1923 to 1925 McCay revived the strip under the title Rarebit Reveries.
Though signed "Robert Winsor McCay Jr." (McCay's son), the strips appear to be in McCay's own hand, with the possible
exception of the lettering.
McCay had also signed some of his animation and editorial cartoons with his son's name.
As of 2007 only seven examples of Rarebit Reveries were known, though it is nearly certain others were printed.
Collections
The earliest collection, titled Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend, appeared in 1905 from Frederick A. Stokes and reprinted 61
of the strips.
Dover Publications reprinted this collection in 1973 in a 10% enlarged edition with new introductory material.
The Dover edition dropped the final strip from the original collection as it contained ethnic humor that the publisher
believed would not be to the taste of a 1970s audience.
Rarebit Fiend examples appear in Daydreams and Nightmares (Fantagraphics, 1988/2006; editor Richard Marschall),
a collection of miscellaneous work by McCay.
Checker Books reprinted many of the Rarebit Fiend strips over eight volumes of the series Winsor McCay:
Early Works[31] and in 2006 reprinted 183 of the color Saturday strips in Dream of the Rarebit Fiend: The Saturdays.
The Checker books reprinted all but about 300 of the known Rarebit Fiend strips.
In July 2007, German art historian Ulrich Merkl self-published a 17 in × 12 in (43.5 cm × 31 cm), 464-page volume called
Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, reproducing 369 of the strips in full size.
Previous reprintings of the strip reduced the strips to about a third of their originally published size, resulting in
loss of detail and making the lettering hard to read. The size of the book made automatic binding impossible, so it had to
be bound by hand.
The book was limited to 1000 copies, and a DVD was included with scans of the 821 known installments of the strip,
the complete text of the book, a catalogue raisonné of the strips, and a video of an example of McCay's animation.
The sources of the strips were from Merkl's personal collection, the Cartoon Research Library of the Ohio State University,
and microfilms purchased from the New York Public Library containing the complete New York Evening Journal run of the strip.
Merkl has said that, on average, six hours were required per strip for scanning and restoration.
The book also featured two essays by Italian comics editor Alfredo Castelli[50] and one by Jeremey Taylor, former president
of the International Association for the Study of Dreams.
The complete Dream of the Rarebit fiend was reprinted in Forgotten Fantasy:
Sunday Comics 1900-1915, published in 2011 by Sunday Press Books. ISBN 978-0-97688-859-8
Legacy
Rarebit Fiend set up a formula which McCay was to use in the better-known Little Nemo.
A large number of the Nemo strips used ideas recycled from Rarebit Fiend, such as the October 31, 1907, "walking bed" episode,
which was used in the July 26, 1908, episode of Little Nemo.
Comics scholar Jeet Heer called Rarebit Fiend "perhaps the most bizarre newspaper feature in American history".
Merkl notes examples of the strip presaging ideas and scenes in later media: the strip includes scenes in which a man kicks
a dog, slaps a woman, beats a blind man, and throws another woman out a window, as in Luis Buñuel's film L'Age d'Or (1930);
and giant characters let loose in the big city, climbing and damaging buildings and subway trains, as in King Kong (1933).
Merkl compares the strip for March 9, 1907, in which a child's bedroom becomes a lion-infested jungle, to the 1950
Ray Bradbury story "The Veldt", and the strip from September 26, 1908, depicting a stretchable face, to Salvador Dalí's
surrealist painting Soft self-portrait with fried bacon (1941) and the cosmetic surgeries in Terry Gilliam's Brazil.
Stephen R. Bissette compares a strip featuring elevators flying from buildings and other scenes to the 2005 Tim Burton
take on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
The strip was most likely an influence on episodes of Frank King's early comic strip Bobby Make-Believe.
Many scholars believe that Carl Barks, a professed fan of Little Nemo, was likely exposed to Rarebit Fiend, which appeared
in The San Francisco Examiner, which Barks read growing up. Several episodes of Barks's Donald Duck strips appear to have
taken their subjects from Rarebit Fiend. Many scenes from animated films by Tex Avery from between 1943 and 1954 are said
to show clearly a Rarebit Fiend influence.
Science fiction illustrator Frank R. Paul painted a number of pulp magazine covers influenced by Rarebit Fiend.
Art Spiegelman paid parodic homage to Rarebit Fiend in his 1974 strip "Real Dream".
In 1991, Rick Veitch began producing short comics based on his dreams.
Beginning in 1994, he put out twenty-one issues of Roarin' Rick's Rare Bit Fiends from his own King Hell Press.
John Ashbery published a poem titled "Dream of a Rarebit Fiend."
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Little Nemo
Introduction
Little Nemo in Slumberland est une bande dessinée créée par l'auteur américain Winsor McCay en 1905, publiée dans l'édition
dominicale du quotidien New York Herald puis dans le New York American.
Littéralement Le petit Nemo au pays du sommeil, cette bande dessinée qui met en scène le personnage de Little Nemo
fut publiée chaque semaine dans ces journaux d'octobre 1905 à juillet 1914.
Little Nemo in Slumberland est aujourd'hui considéré comme une œuvre majeure dans le domaine de la bande dessinée,
visionnaire dans son approche et admirable dans son dessin, faisant de Winsor McCay un précurseur de la bande dessinée
moderne.
Ainsi le magazine Lire situe cette bande dessinée à la 6e place dans son classement des 50 meilleures bandes dessinées
du monde.
En 1911, McCay reprend les personnages de sa BD pour réaliser le film Little Nemo
Historique
Little Nemo (personne en latin) est un petit garçon timide, sage et rêveur, ressemblant à tous les garçons de son âge
(environ 6 ans).
Une nuit, Morphée, roi du monde onirique appelé Slumberland, l'invite officiellement dans son royaume par l'intermédiaire
d'un serviteur dans le but de le présenter à sa fille, la princesse.
Chaque nuit lorsque Little Nemo s'endormira il entrera dans le monde fantastique des rêves.
On suit alors les aventures mouvementées du jeune dormeur dans un monde aux décors insolites avec pour but de réussir
à entrer dans Slumberland pour y rencontrer la princesse.
Mais Nemo rencontre bien des difficultés.
Sur son chemin, il rencontre notamment Flip, d'abord un ennemi qui veut le réveiller, mais qui finit par se ranger de
son côté.
Au début de 1906, Little Nemo arriva enfin devant les portes de Slumberland, mais il lui fallut surmonter quatre mois
d'embûches pour rencontrer la princesse.
Ils commenceront alors à visiter Slumberland, la planète Mars, la Lune, le pôle Nord, voyageront dans un dirigeable,
sur le dos des oiseaux, des chevaux de mer ou encore dans un lit vivant, rencontreront des sirènes, des dinosaures et
mille autres choses étonnantes.
Slumberland (« le pays du sommeil » en anglais) est habité d'étranges créatures, d'humains et d'animaux vivant dans des
décors oniriques à l'architecture Art nouveau.
Le peuple de Slumberland passe son temps à faire la fête, à rendre hommage à son vénérable roi Morphée, ou encore à se
plaindre du facétieux Flip.
La taille de Slumberland semble extensible au gré des aventures qui pourraient être interminables à ceci près que chaque
matin Nemo devra revenir à la dure réalité…
Analyse
Bien que se présentant comme une bande dessinée enfantine (rappelant Les Aventures d'Alice au pays des merveilles
de Lewis Carroll), Little Nemo in Slumberland est loin d'être un simple conte pour enfants et aborde des sujets sombres,
irréels et parfois violents, fortement influencés par la psychanalyse et l'étude des rêves.
Toutes les planches se terminent par une case montrant Little Nemo se réveillant dans son lit
(ou plus souvent sur le sol après être tombé de son lit à la suite d'une nuit agitée), se faisant parfois gronder par
un de ses parents pour avoir crié dans son sommeil.
Dans les premières histoires, la majorité des rêves de Little Nemo se terminent mal, par une mort ou un accident.
Certaines se terminent par une chute (d'un pont ou d'un dirigeable), d'autres par l'écrasement de Little Nemo par
un champignon géant, par sa transformation en singe ou en vieillard.
Sur une planche publiée le jour de Thanksgiving, McCay ira même jusqu'à faire manger la maison de Little Nemo par une dinde
géante.
Parmi les personnages secondaires, le plus intéressant est probablement Flip.
C'est alternativement un ami ou un ennemi de Little Nemo et il lui joue des tours. Cynique et manipulateur, ce personnage
n'est autre que le double de Little Nemo, sa mauvaise conscience.
De manière plus globale, toutes les aventures qui arrivent au personnage principal, se déroulant intégralement dans ses
rêves, peuvent être vues comme une ouverture sur son subconscient, chaque évènement ayant une signification.
McCay tenait à reproduire au plus près possible l'impression d'être dans un rêve ; ainsi un des principes de sa bande
dessinée est l'évolution, la métamorphose, la transformation constante du décor et des objets à la manière d'un rêve.
Les escaliers peuvent devenir des serpents puis des spirales, ce qu'on croyait être des montagnes se révèlent être des
créatures étranges.
Des objets du quotidien deviennent géants, certains détails apparaissent d'un seul coup d'une case à une autre.
L'objet le plus significatif est bien sûr le lit de Nemo.
Dans ses rêves celui-ci se transforme au gré des aventures en vaisseau, en bateau, en une monture vivante aux jambes
interminables, enjambant les immeubles comme dans The Walking Bed.
Beaucoup d'auteurs de bande dessinée admirent la fertilité de l'imagination de McCay.
Certains épisodes sont particulièrement marquants, comme The Walking Bed ou encore l'histoire dans laquelle Nemo et
une petite fille sont poursuivis par des maisons animées. Certains disent[Qui ?] que l'auteur fut peut-être sous
l'emprise de psychotropes.
La bande dessinée
La bande dessinée est publiée à partir du 15 octobre 1905 dans le quotidien New York Herald sous le nom de Little Nemo
in Slumberland.
Le 23 avril 1911, McCay quitte le journal mais Little Nemo est publié jusqu'au 23 juillet.
La série reprend le 3 septembre 1911 dans le journal concurrent le New York American (propriété de William Randolph Hearst)
après avoir été rebaptisée In the Land of Wonderful Dreams.
Il continuera jusqu'en 1914. L'ensemble du travail réalisé durant ces deux périodes représente 421 planches.
La bande dessinée fera une réapparition de 1924 à 1926 dans l'ancien New York Herald devenu le New York Herald Tribune,
et une autre éphémère en 1935 sous le crayon de Winsor McCay Jr, fils du créateur.
Little Nemo eut au départ un succès mitigé, les lecteurs n'accrochant pas au genre fantastique et aux thèmes
psychanalytiques sous-jacents.
Le public préférait alors les bandes dessinées à gags telles que Pim, Pam et Poum, Buster Brown ou encore Krazy Kat.
Ce n'est que dans le dernier quart du XXe siècle que l'œuvre de Winsor McCay fut redécouverte et encensée.
On reconnut alors les qualités notables de Little Nemo.
Tout d'abord il faut saluer la précision et le niveau de détails du dessin.
Le talent de McCay dans l'art de la perspective et sa rigueur dans les lignes et les détails rendent ce comics
graphiquement convaincant malgré le thème fantastique.
Ce talent pour insuffler de la profondeur au dessin lui servira aussi plus tard dans la réalisation de ses films d'animation.
D'autre part, les planches de Nemo dans le New York Herald prenaient une pleine page ; McCay joua donc beaucoup sur le
format, multipliant les cases, mettant en valeur telle ou telle action, donnant des effets de profondeur,
spectaculaires ou surprenants et profitant de l'onirisme de ces histoires pour sortir des cases de bandes dessinées.
Les décors à chaque fois étonnants lui sont inspirés par l'Art nouveau dont il est fervent adepte ainsi que par
ses propres voyages et visites (comme l'Exposition universelle de Chicago de 1893).
Little Nemo fut aussi un des premiers comics à utiliser le potentiel énorme offert par les pages du dimanche
(sunday strips) à savoir l'impression en couleur. Les couleurs sont souvent vives et parfois lorsque l'histoire le demande plus nuancées et pastel.
La rapidité de déroulement de l'action, les dialogues et bien sûr les scénarios ne sont pas en reste.
Les dialogues sont souvent pimentés et humoristiques (surtout ceux de Flip) et les scénarios montrent à maintes
reprises une imagination sans limites.
Publications en Albums
Il existe trois principales publications en albums de Little Nemo in Slumberland, traduites en français.
L'édition Pierre Horay date de 1969 et est la traduction de l'édition américaine Nostalgia Press.
Elle comporte 242 des 272 planches couvrant la période 1905 - 1910.
Un tiers des planches environ a été recolorié d'après les publications originales, et les deux tiers restants sont
reproduits en noir et blanc.
30 planches sont manquantes sur le total. Un second volume, paru en 1981, complète le premier avec les planches
de 1912 à 1926.
Une seconde édition, intitulée "intégrale", traduite de l'édition américaine Fantagraphics, commence à paraître en volumes
en 1989 chez Milan, puis Zenda, mais elle s'interrompt au volume 5 (1911-1912) tandis qu'un tome 6 existe aux États-Unis
(1913-1915).
De format plus petit que la Pierre Horay, elle reprend toutes les planches dans l'ordre chronologique et en couleurs.
La qualité est parfois limitée par l'état de conservation des publications originales qui ont pu être retrouvées.
Un volume intitulé Little Nemo 1905-1914, publié par Evergreen en 2000, reprend les 420 planches rassemblées pour cette
édition, comblant ainsi le vide laissé par le tome 6 non traduit.
Seule une planche alternative pour les journaux français n'y figure pas.
Une troisième édition paraît chez Delcourt en 2006 en très grand format, correspondant à l'édition américaine Sunday Press.
Elle comporte une sélection de 110 planches de la période 1905-1910, restaurées minutieusement par Peter Maresca.
La qualité graphique est très supérieure aux éditions précédentes.
Un second volume y ajoute 116 autres planches et étend la période de sélection jusqu'à 1926.
Une édition véritablement intégrale regroupant les 548 planches de 1905 à 1926 en deux volumes existe aux États-Unis
chez Checker.
Une seconde édition intégrale, en un seul volume (coffret), a été réalisée par Alexander Braun et publiée par Taschen
en 2014.
Bien qu'elle ait été publiée en France, seule la biographie de McCay qui l'accompagne a été traduite.
Toutes les planches de Little Nemo y sont en anglais.
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Bibliographies
Références
• Les Cahiers de la bande dessinée, no 78, novembre-décembre 1987. (ISSN 1772-5526)
• Little Nemo : 1905-2005 : un siècle de rêves, Art Spiegelman, Bruxelles, Impressions nouvelles, 2005 (ISBN 9782874490002)
• Winsor McCay : his life and art, (en) John Canemaker, New York, Harry N. Abrams, 2005 (1re éd. 1987) (ISBN 9780810959415)
• Au début était le jaune…, une histoire subjective de la bande dessinée, Dominique Dupuis, Paris, PLG, coll. « Mémoire vive », 2005, 263 p. (ISBN 2952272905)
• Winsor McCay. His Life and Art, (en) John Canemaker, Abbeville Press, 1987.
• Little Nemo au pays de Winsor McCay, Thierry Groensteen (dir.), Milan, 1990. (ISBN 978-2867265594)
• McCay, t. 1 : Thierry Smolderen (ill. Jean-Philippe Bramanti), La balançoire hantée, Paris, Delcourt, 2000, 56 p. (ISBN 9782840553182)
• McCay, t. 2 : Thierry Smolderen (ill. Jean-Philippe Bramanti), Les cœurs retournés, Paris, Delcourt, 2002, 47 p. (ISBN 9782840555377)
• McCay, t. 3 : Thierry Smolderen (ill. Jean-Philippe Bramanti), Le Gardien de l'aube, Paris, Delcourt, 22 septembre 2003, 48 p. (ISBN 978-2840558514)
• McCay, t. 4 : Thierry Smolderen (ill. Jean-Philippe Bramanti), La quatrième dimension, Paris, Delcourt, 2 février 2006, 51 p. (ISBN 978-2840558545)
• Winsor McCay la vie et l'oeuvre d'un génie du crayon, Alexander Braun, 2014, Éditions Taschen, 144 pages; ouvrage complémentaire à The Complete Little Nemo by Winsor McCay, Éditions Taschen, 564 pages (ISBN 978-3-8365-5432-9)
Texte © Wikipédia