Monday 15 December 2014

Taschen's The Complete Little Nemo: The Missing Strip

Under our Christmas Tree this year, if it fits (it's bloody huge!) will be a copy of this. It was published over a year late, but on all accounts is well worth the wait. If you're unfamiliar with Winsor McCay's masterwork, then hie thee to Google and have a look. Suffice to say it was doing things with the comics genre over a hundred years ago which arguably have still not been bettered.

My copy has yet to be opened, but I see from reviews online that it is apparently annoyingly incomplete to the tune of one strip. Back on January 7, 1906 the US newspapers and European ones for seem reason carried different strips, and the Taschen book reportedly only includes one of them (which one, I don't know, yet).

So, as a public service, here are both strips from that day, as reproduced in the Sunday Press editions (which were also incomplete, but at least did not purport to be).

[UPDATE: Commenter Leonidas II clarifies the history of these strips: "Both pages where published in the USA. Some papers published one, some published the other. Bill Blackbeard tells all the story in volume VI of the Fantagraphics edition." Thanks Leonidas. The Fantagraphics editions (published by Titan Books in the UK) have always been very pricey on the secondary market, so I've only ever owned a volume 3. Perhaps they will become more affordable now the Taschen edition has come out.]




3 comments:

  1. No, both pages where published in the USA. Some papers published one, some published the other. Bill Blackbeard thells all the story in volume VI of the Fantagraphics edition.

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    1. Ah, many thanks for the clarification!

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    2. I can also now confirm that it's the top strip, the one with the carriage, that does not appear in the Taschen book (or at least, it does not appear in its correct chronological order: I'm *still* poring through the rest of this gargantuan publication!).

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