Alexander Braun

Nocturnal adventures The best of Little Nemo in Slumberland Little Nemo may be a diminutive hero of comic narrative but he sure stands tall as one of the greatest voyagers of the 20th century. The master creation of Winsor McCay (1869-1934), this small and restless sleeper inspired generations of artists with his weekly adventures from bed to Slumberland, a dream realm of colorful companions, elaborate architecture, psychedelic scenery, and thrilling adventures. Winsor McCay's The Complete Little Nemo 1905-1909 collects in full, glorious color, 220 of the finest of Nemo's nocturnal escapades from the period 1905-1909. Through them, we delight not only in the splendor of Slumberland, a surreal benchmark for Robert Crumb and Federico Fellini, but also McCay's pioneering panel layout and storytelling techniques, his timing and pacing, and extraordinary architectural and other detail. In the illustrated accompanying volume, art historian and comics expert Alexander Braun places Winsor McCay's life and work within the cultural history of the U.S. media and entertainment industry, and explores the immense art historical significance of McCay's dream narrative. At once an adventure story, visual delight, and piece of cultural history, this publication is a tremendous monument to one of the most innovative pioneers-and one of the most intrepid explorers-of comic history.

Adventures in Pajamas Little Nemo up, up, and away Meet Little Nemo, a diminutive hero of comic narrative, but one of the greatest dream voyagers of the 20th century. The master creation of Winsor McCay (1869-1934), restless sleeper Nemo inspired generations of artists with his weekly adventures from bed to Slumberland, a realm of colorful companions, psychedelic scenery, and thrilling escapades. This book gathers all of Little Nemo's colorful airship adventures in Slumberland, totaling 69 installments, first published between January 1910 and April 1911. Brimming with sky-high imagination, these airship adventures represent some of the most ambitious artwork and exciting tales of McCay's revolutionary comic and of his much-loved dream voyager. The installments see Nemo flying to the moon, to Mars, and on a triumphant tour of major sights and metropolises across the East Coast of America and Canada and beyond, including Yellowstone National Park, Niagara Falls, and New York City. An introductory essay from art historian Alexander Braun contextualizes these airship episodes within the broader Little Nemo series as well as McCay'' ambitious and exceptionally influential career. Braun reveals how the airship journey was not only a pioneering narrative arc in the early days of comic but also a "creative bombshell" which propelled McCay towards further endeavors, namely the first animated film in history.

Little Nemo may be a diminutive hero of comic narrative, but he sure stands tall as one of the greatest voyagers of the 20th century. The master creation of Winsor McCay (1869-1934), this small and restless sleeper inspired generations of artists with his weekly adventures from bed to Slumberland, a dream realm of colorful companions, elaborate architecture, psychedelic scenery, and thrilling adventures. This second volume collects, in glorious full color and XXL resolution, all 329 of Nemo's nocturnal escapades from 1910 to 1927. Through them, we delight not only in the splendor of Slumberland, a surreal benchmark for Robert Crumb and Federico Fellini, but also McCay's pioneering panel layout and storytelling techniques, his timing and pacing, and extraordinary architectural detail. At once an adventure story, visual delight, and piece of cultural history, this publication is a monument to one of the most innovative pioneers-and one of the most intrepid explorers-of comic history.The XXL clothbound volume features all episodes from: The New York Herald years (1910-1911, "Little Nemo in Slumberland") including the legendary Airship Adventures The William Randolph Hearst years (1911-1914, "In the Land of Wonderful Dreams") The New York Herald Tribune years (1924-1927, "Little Nemo in Slumberland")

The premise is simple: a black cat loves scheming a white mouse who incessantly throws bricks at the cat's head, which police dog Officer Pupp, secretly harboring a passionate love for the cat, tries to prevent. George Herriman endlessly plays with the above formula in his legendary newspaper strip Krazy Kat, published from 1913 until his death in 1944. Through his wit, detailed characterization, and visual-verbal creativity, Herriman introduced even the least comically-inclined to the young medium; Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, James Joyce, US President Woodrow Wilson, Jackson Pollock, Charlie Chaplin, Frank Capra, P.G. Wodehouse, Willem de Kooning-all KK fans among many others. It was thanks to media tycoon William Randolph Hearst, a confirmed fan who gave Herriman carte blanche in his newspapers, that the artist was allowed to freely explore countless absurd and melancholy variations on the theme of unrequited love for years on end. Herriman unabashedly took advantage of this, radically exploring the medium's potential and pushing all of its formal boundaries; readers had to put up with surreal, Dadaist sceneries, a language that whirled slang, neologisms, phonetic spelling, and scholarly references, and diffuse gender roles-making Krazy Kat probably the first gender-fluid star in comic history. This volume presents all Krazy Kat color stories from 1935-1944 and a detailed introduction by comic expert Alexander Braun, who illuminates Herriman's multi-ethnic background and reveals what makes this timeless work of art about a queer cat so extraordinary.