4th wall breaking is a reinforcement that the characters are aware of the audience, or are aware that they inhabit a form of media. 4th wall breaking that is specific to comics in interacting with the panel lines, gutters, and word bubbles. The most famous example of this today is the Marvel anti-hero Deadpool, but this has been a style… Read more →
Tag: Little Nemo
Are graphic novels inherently dark?
An interesting point of similarity between all the stories we have read so far is the darkness or negativity found in each story. Up until this point every graphic novel we have discussed in class has had a dark nature at least in a point of it. To prove this point that I see as being so pervasive let me… Read more →
Authorial Intent and Reader Interpretation in Comics
Over the past week we’ve learned about some of the methods that have been used to define comics and transitions within comics. Many of the transitions we learned about are tools for both the writer and the reader. A reader can see an aspect-to-aspect transition and take meaning from that, and an author can also make a conscious decision to… Read more →
Public Domain and Comic Books
Copyright is key in creating a successful franchise, yet there are many comics that lack copyrights. However, just because a comic series did not have long lasting marketability does not mean that they are not incredibly enthralling or interesting to study. Comic books that are a part of the public domain are particularly interesting because of their availability to… Read more →
Little Nemo for a little audience
Last week while discussing Little Nemo Dr. Whalen mentioned how the comic never really appealed to most children despite the fact that Winsor McCay ‘s intended audience was young children. I was actually surprised to learn that Little Nemo was purposefully meant for children. The amount of near death experience Nemo faces would surely have bothered me as a child.… Read more →
Little Nemo ≠ Finding Nemo
It’s odd to think that comics and graphic novels existed in the 1900s, as well as earlier. I think we’re just accustomed to associating the term “graphic novel” to the works of Frank Miller and Alan Moore. I personally always think of Watchmen. I never would have thought that a series like Little Nemo could share anything in common with the bloody, sexually graphic book… Read more →
Reading “The City” by Masereel was a nice way to start the class. I liked easing into things by looking at each picture, though I did find myself searching for some sort of story line and felt a little disconnected from the work because of its apparent lack of one. As an English major, I automatically look for that connection,… Read more →
The Trippy World of Nemo’s Oz
In class while discussing Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo, the general consensus of the class was that the themes in the comic were “trippy” or “strange” what with the fantastical creatures appearing in Nemo’s dreams and the creepy ways that Nemo appears to “die” at the end of each comic. In a particular comic from 1905-11-12 which depicts Nemo trying to… Read more →
Mr. Sandman meets Little Nemo
While I would never pretend that Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo and Neil Gaiman’s Sandman appear very similar, I could not help but think of how both authors depict the “dreamworld”. In class we talked about panels that we found to be disturbing or ‘trippy’, and I couldn’t help but make comparisons with how dark and haunting both graphics are. Sandman, a far more modern spin… Read more →
Style Minus Substance
I always felt that the benefit of comics and graphic novels was the ability to use words and images in equal effect to tell a story. Masereel’s The City challenged this viewpoint, but there was still a story buried in those black and white woodcuts. The stories Little Nemo in Slumberland are a series of surreal adventures undertaken but a… Read more →