One of the comics we read this week that really spoke to me was Little Nemo, for its unique and beautiful art style combined with an almost comedic nature. When I first opened the comic, I had a completely different interpretation of what I thought I was going to read, and didn’t expect to outwardly laugh at some pages. At first glance, a reader might interpret Little Nemo’s story to be serious or poetically symbolic due to its highly detailed art nouveau style, and while the story definitely has those elements, once you start reading the story you realize how funny and silly the comic actually is. Every page ends with Little Nemo waking up the real world, usually with a little comment about how he eats strange foods before bed, with the foods themselves getting increasingly more strange. At one moment in the story, Little Nemo is dreaming about the real world and his house floats right up into the air. In response, his father takes the gun and peers out the window with a disgruntled expression. His calm and seemingly annoyed response to something so whimsical really amused me and I couldn’t help but laugh at the juxtaposition.
The characters featured in the comics are also unlike anything found in typical art nouveau pieces, with large clowns, circus animals, and large, goofy men. All of these themes led me to wonder if McCay had intended for these pieces to be primarily art or entertaining jokes, or if the entire story was created to be a blend of the two from the beginning. Up until this point, it almost seems that influential art had been created solely for serious purposes (commissions, religious recordings, historical documentation), and it was refreshing to see such a beautiful take on a silly world.
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