McCay, Winsor [Jungle Imps, Gertie the Dinosaur] *

Although Winsor McCay is one of the few comic artists that rival George Herriman for being the most important of them all, it has always been difficult to collect his most interesting pieces. The artist's editorial cartoons can be fabulous, but they areb;t comic strips and rarely command high prices. Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend Sundays have always been readily available, the art for that series is often rather dull. Hungry Henrietta pages are very rare and, the only one I ever had a chance to buy was also somewhat dull. Little Sammy Sneeze pages are slightly more plentiful, but the one i have always wanted is still owned by a McCay descendant. That leaves the most important of all, Little Nemo in Slumberland, which, unfortunately suffered at the hands of McCay's son. In the 1930s, at a time when almost no one was collecting original strip art, the son cut up many Nemo pages in order to have them used in reprint comics. Most of the best Sundays were mutilated, leaving the least inspired examples intact. Woody Gelman of Nostalgia Press came into possession of many of the cut up Sundays. He consigned some to Collectors Book Store in the 1970s, but they were so damaged that Collectors couldn't do anything with them. A few very nice Nemos were sold through Illustration House in New York during the 1990s, and one of the greatest of all, the Walking Bed Sunday, has been owned by Garry Trudeau for many years. Since I have been collecting strip art, no great Nemo has been offered for sale. Fortunately, I was somewhat involved with the great hoard of originals from McCay's first comic strip, Tales of the Jungle Imp, which turned up several years ago. I also am one of the few who knows the history of Gertie the Dinosaur animation drawings. The details of the Jungle Imps and Gerties are told under the entries for the examples in my collection.