Little Nemo in Sumberland, by Winsor McCay

Little Nemo in Slumberland is so goddamn good. Krazy Kat is great too. I absolutely adore how these pieces shattered my expectation of comic strips or what I've always known as "the funnies". These strips don't just go for the gag, they don't just use some clever word play to give the audience a quick jolt, but rather give the reader an experience. The massive Little Nemo prints are beautifully done, and bring the viewer to another world where anything can happen. Winsor McCay's strip is successful in immersing me as a reader because of it's wonderfully surreal art nouveau inspired images that evokes memories of my own adventures through dreams. I can only imagine reading one of these strips in a pre-Harryhausen world where movie monsters and cgi did not exist. I think the common thread between Krazy Kat and Little Nemo is a sense of depth that I feel strips in the Sunday paper of today lack. The punch lines of these two strips seem more varied and complex than that of the 1, 2, 3, punch of comics today. Krazy Kat was a strip that didn't shy away from having a somber human moment as its "punch line" and Little Nemo seems to have rarely had a gag at all, but instead relied on subtle mysterious stories that people could immerse themselves in. I also personally like how we can see within Krazy Kat and Little Nemo the experimentation and human hand within each work. You can tell that these artists truly loved what they did and really expressed their own feelings and thoughts through their historic work.