A Bed Likes to Get Out Once in a While

Here is what is probably the most famous of all of Winsor McCay's cartoons, published exactly 100 years ago today...

(Thanks goes out to the Comic Strip Library!)

Winsor McCay's first recorded picture

I've long known about Winsor McCay's childhood/schoolhouse drawing of the sinking ship... Well apparently the Tri-Cities Historical Museum has a copy!

I was looking through David Seibold's new book on the history of Grand Haven MI, In the Path of Destiny, and was amazed to see this included in the section about Winsor McCay:

"Spring Lake's Great fire of 1893 destroyed the school and all the records which might have revealed some of the genius of the budding artist. But perhaps all was not lost. On October 15, 1880 the ill-fated Goodrich steamship Alpena left Grand Haven bound for Chicago with 46 persons aboard. It was never seen again. The event stunned everyone in the Grand Haven Area. In 1880, at age 11, Winsor McCay made a chalk drawing on a slate of his impression of the Alpena as it was sinking on a story Lake Michigan. The teacher was so impressed with the rendering she had a photographer take a picture of it, who then sold copies. A postcard appeared at that time which showed the sinking of the Alpena and, presumably, was the photo of the Winsor McCay drawing. A copy is in the Museum files."

I've never seen this photo reprinted anywhere else before... What a great find! The photo dates from the right time and is certainly white chalk on black slate. This whole story is especially interesting when one considers McCay's later animated masterpiece which depicted the sinking of the Lusitania. Perhaps the creation of that film was spurred, in part, by the emotional connection to this first moment of artistic celebrity from his childhood...

Slumberland Titles!

It has always astounded me how someone with drafting skill like this:


...could fill dialog balloons like this:


Wha...? Clearly Winsor McCay was a master draftsman. And certainly the wonder of his comics is in the art, not the writing. But even though the the content of the dialog is inconsequential, still it seems he would have taken care with its visual presentation, yes? Perhaps the blight of his word balloons serves a purpose -- making the art all the more astounding by contrast?? Naw, there's no defense. They stink.

Anyway, it's not that he couldn't do lettering well. After all, he had a career as a poster designer for a while. And his title panels show exquisite lettering. So... to celebrate the fact that McCay COULD do excellent lettering when he put his mind to it, I've put together a collection - just a mere handful - of his gorgeous and varied title panels... Enjoy!

Winsor McCay Sketching

I found this photo a while ago... I thought I'd wait until today to post it since the date on the photo reads 7/17/08 -- of course that's 1908, a hundred years ago today. McCay is the fellow in the dapper hat. He's sketching his son Robert at an Actor's Benefit event.

Superman meets McCay

In 1998 Stuart Immonen created a series of Superman comics retelling origin stories the villains. The premise was that Lex Luthor was reading bedtime stories to his daughter, and Immonen illustrated them in the style of Winsor McCay's Slumberland comics!

You can see a whole slew of them here!

Michelangelo's Pieta

In addition to introducing Spring Lake citizens to Winsor McCay, we also hope to use this blog to introduce its visitors to Spring Lake. Those of you with a taste for art history will be especially interested to discover that Spring Lake, Michigan is home to one of only three exact replicas of Michelangelo's Pieta.


In 1964 Michelangelo's original Pieta was put on public display at the World Fair. Millions of people who otherwise would have never gotten the chance to see this masterpiece now could enjoy it firsthand. However, just in case some unforeseen disaster should befall, before moving the statue from Rome, a mold was made directly from the original marble and three replicas were cast.

The first casting resides at the Vatican, the second is in Iowa, and the third is right here in Spring Lake Michigan. It resides outside St. Mary's, right up the street from Spring Lake District Library and the former sites of Winsor McCay's childhood school and home. The statue boasts exact reproduction of every minute detail from Michelangelo's original. You can read more about this treasure at St. Mary's website, here.

At The Mountains Of Slumberland

Question -- What do you get when you cross H.P. Lovecraft,
Winsor McCay, and a bunch of mimes?
Answer -- One of the oddest thing you'll ever lay eyes on:
"Necropolis 3: At The Mountains Of Slumberland"
If you dare, check it out here...

Runnin' Down a Dream

Here's a great tribute to Winsor McCay's "Little Nemo in Slumberland" -- there are tons of scenes straight from the comic. Take a look at the music video for Tom Petty's "Runnin' Down A Dream":

Little Nemo: the Dream Master

Here's a video game that came out in the late 80's/early 90's based on Little Nemo in Slumberland. I've never seen it, and don't know much about video games myself in general. But over the years I've come across lots of people talking about it, and consistently they say it was "their favorite game" or "the best game released for Nintendo NES."

Annecy 2008

Annecy is the world's largest Animation Film Festival, held annually in France. The event took place a few weeks ago, and there John Canemaker gave a presentation on "The Art and Life of Winsor McCay." Oswald Iten, an animator from Switzerland, was in attendance and had glowing praise on his blog for Canemaker's performance. I asked Oswald if he could expound on what made the the presentation so great, and he was kind enough to send in this report for us! Thanks Oswald!
(pictures via John Canemaker's site)

John Canemaker presents “Winsor McCay, his Life and Art” at this year’s Annecy Animation Festival

Imagine Winsor McCay’s first four films on a giant screen with live musical accompaniment (festival director Serge Bromberg on the grand piano) and background information provided by one of animation’s most accomplished historians.

John Canemaker’s highly informative and well-prepared lecture was illustrated by examples of McCay’s graphic and motion picture work on the big screen. On the basis of McCay’s first four (partly) animated films, Canemaker managed to explain not only McCay’s groundbreaking evolution in the field of animation but also how his showman skills were important to his success. In reference to the cartoonist’s extraordinary draftsmanship – he usually drew from top to bottom with almost no sketching even on poster sized pictures – Canemaker compared him Leonardo DaVinci.

With perfectly timed comments during the screenings of Little Nemo (1911), How a mosquito operates (1912) and Gertie the dinosaur (1914) the historian revealed interesting background information while helping a contemporary audience to fully appreciate and enjoy the gags and allusions. The presentation included McCay’s clearly staged live-action efforts to emphasize that he was the creator of what is on the screen. Canemaker pointed to the sense of weight McCay put into his early films decades ahead of Walt Disney. When Gertie empties the sea, for example, her body is not inflated but the ground starts giving way to the increasingly heavier dinosaur.

If you ever thought that Gertie was nothing more than a lengthy exercise of mere historical value, you should see John Canemaker presenting it the way it was intended: as a vaudeville act. Although he also showed the live-action intro that was made for “standard” theatrical exhibition, he then proceeded to take on the role of Winsor McCay and started telling Gertie to do some tricks. Whenever she didn’t follow his commands he called on the audience (almost 1000 people that afternoon) to encourage Gertie to be obedient. Suddenly strange looking parts such as back and forth loops or endless repetitions became understandable as either dancing or refusing to lift a foot on orders, for example.

While most experiments in character animation (squash and stretch in Nemo, weight and re-use of drawings in Mosquito) were applied expertly to Gertie, the background still had to be traced frame by frame. So Canemaker ended his presentation with a short introduction to McCay’s first cel animation The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918) which was then projected accompanied only by Serge Bromberg’s sensitive piano playing to bring out the sheer beauty of the film.

John Canemaker achieved the feat of transporting the audience back to the 1910s and opening their eyes for an unfamiliar experience of familiar movies. No wonder John was brought out “for an unprecedented curtain call at the end of his presentation.”

- Oswald Iten

(Wow -- wouldn't it be great to get Canemaker over here in West Michigan??? McCay Day '09... or the Muskegon Film Festival... or the Kalamazoo Animation Festival... Hmmmmm...)

Original Art for Sale

I don't know historically how much original Winsor McCay drawings have been going for, but I recently saw these two pieces of animation art for sale in an auction. Curious to know how much they're worth? The Gertie had a starting bid of $7500 and the Lusitania was $8000. I would have expected Gertie to be the higher of the two, but I bet McCay's signature raises the second one.

Makes you sick when you think of how those drawings were treated in McCay's films. Remember in the "Little Nemo" and "Gertie" movies when, as a gag, hundreds of McCay's drawings get dropped all over the floor and trampled? As I understand it, those weren't props - those really were his actual drawings... They had already been filmed frame by frame of course, and no one saw any need/value in the actual physical drawings anymore.

What the...

I stumbled across this and hesitate even to post it... It's some kind of production called "Gertie the Dinosaur Tales." I would love to believe it's some bad, bad Onion joke, except there's the problem of the elaborate website. The character designs are just terrible! And listen to this horrific synopsis!

An original time travel adventure about a 10 year old, Sept. 11 orphan and his dog who find an ancient, magic trunk and travel through it to a fantastic colorful cartoon universe and to 1914 New York City and Chicago. Walt finds friendship and learns to love while apprenticing widower, Winsor McCay, and the real Gertie the Dinosaur. Mr. Michael the vaudeville theater magnate threatens to take Winsor's home and films for being behind in loan payments. He steals Winsor's animated film in hopes to learn his animation secrets and become the king of cartoons. Gertie's funny animated sidekick Moe Skeeto throws great punchlines. Winsor finds love again with both Walt and Maude, his smart, beautiful, modern sister-in-law who is the spitting image of his late wife.

What the heck?!

I'm all for tributes to McCay, but this... this seems very, very wrong. Widower? Sister-in-law love? 9-11 orphan? Hopefully this goes away...