Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics (4 points)

 One of the early comics in this collection that particularly caught my eye was Little Nemo. I had previously first read some of these comics back in my sophomore year during my history of illustration course, and I’m glad I could see them again in this course as well. Apart from my love for the art style and color palette, I really think these comics helped make a name for themselves in terms of utilizing the comic strip format the best. With many other comics, I have seen collected around this age, a lot of them stick to having their characters smack in the middle or in at least a pretty center centric position, with the dialogue making up for the rest of the blankness. While I’m not saying that Little Nemo doesn’t do this as well, a special part that makes their comics a little bit more unique is how they’re really able to emphasize the shape and space within their specific panels. For example, with longer panels, McCay may draw a character with extremely long legs to fit in proportion to the length of the space, and vice versa for a short panel. The effect of this is creating a distorted yet fun to look at a series of illustrations that almost feel like they’re just waiting to burst out of the box. I have not seen many comic strips back then that would break the frame, so seeing this fun take on creating different shaped panels (rather than the standard square or long horizontal) I think is a key element to look back and appreciate when we see so many comics today with characters or objects that break the panel. McCay’s ability to use what might seem like a disadvantage for comics as a new way of composing his illustrations is quite fascinating to look at. 


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