Winsor McCay. The Airship Adventures of Little Nemo

Meet Little Nemo, a diminutive hero of comic narrative, but one of the greatest dream voyagers of the 20th century. The master creation of Winsor McCay (1869–1934), Nemo inspired generations of artists with his weekly adventures from bed to Slumberland, a realm of colorful companions, psychedelic scenery, and thrilling escapades. This book gathers all of Little Nemo’s colorful airship adventures in Slumberland, totaling 69 installments, first published between January 1910 and April 1911. Brimming with sky-high imagination, these airship adventures represent some of the most ambitious artwork and exciting tales of McCay’s revolutionary comic and of his much-loved dream voyager. The installments see Nemo flying to the moon, to Mars, and on a triumphant tour of major sights and metropolises across the East Coast of America and Canada and beyond, including Yellowstone National Park, Niagara Falls, and New York City. An introductory essay from art historian Alexander Braun contextualizes these airship episodes within the broader Little Nemo series as well as McCay’s ambitious and exceptionally influential career. Braun reveals how the airship journey was not only a pioneering narrative arc in the early days of comic but also a “creative bombshell” which propelled McCay towards further endeavors, namely the first animated film in history. 

The author

Visual artist Alexander Braun (born 1966) has received numerous accolades and scholarships, and his work has appeared in several exhibitions. Alongside his independent artistic activities, he studied art history in Bochum and Berlin (his 1998 doctorate thesis was on the work of the American installation artist Robert Gober). Over the past two decades, Braun has compiled one of the most extensive collections on the history of comics. Since 2008, he has curated several museum exhibits on this topic, including a comprehensive retrospective on the work of Winsor McCay in 2012/2013. In 2011, he founded the German Academy of Comic Art.

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