And sometimes his mother or father is there to welcome him back to reality. Often he finds that he has fallen out of bed. The last frame of every strip always has Nemo waking up back in the reassuring familiarity of his bedroom. The strip then consists of what happens to Little Nemo when he leaves the safety of his bed and travels through Slumberland to meet the king. In the very first frame, Morpheus, the King of Slumberland, ‘requests the presence of Little Nemo’. The premise of this comic strip is simple. I picked it up, opened the cover, and fell into a magical world. On this particular day what caught my eye was a large-format hardback entitled The Complete Little Nemo in Slumberland, Volume 1: 1905–1907. The lure of a cut-price book, the siren call of an unfamiliar, intriguing title, and the utter lack of pretension of these places are irresistible. If I have a literary guilty secret it is that I am addicted to these establishments. I first came across the work of McCay while browsing in one of those bookshops that only sell remaindered books. And I also realize that writing about a comic strip in a literary magazine may seem a bit odd, but indulge me a little and let’s see where we get to. I know this is a bold statement to make, but I’m going to make it anyway. There is only one genius who has ever written a comic strip and his name is Winsor McCay.
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