Giant Little Nemo Collection Continues to Wow Comic Art Enthusiasts

A young boy is tucked into bed. Once asleep, he descends into a sequential dream, a journey to Slumberland. Each night, the most bizarre adventure befalls him on his quest to reach Slumberland’s palace and the beautiful princess within. Each night, just as he thinks he might find the perfect path, a successful solution, — the unexpected happens, and he wakes up in his own bed, unfulfilled.

A little more than hundred years ago, Winsor McCay’s visually stunning Little Nemo in Slumberland comic strip first thrilled newspaper audiences. They had never seen anything like it. The New York Herald Sunday strip filled an entire back page of the newspaper. McCay used color, spatial design and cinematic-like pacing and transitions to break the bounds of the two-dimensional page and tap all of the dreamlike potential and power of the unconscious mind. In the process, he gave birth to many visual and artistic techniques that can be found in graphic novels and film to this day. McCay’s Little Nemo is still considered by many to be the finest example of comic art ever produced.

In the 1970s, Peter Maresca, a software programmer and dotcom entrepreneur, discovered Little Nemo in its original full-page glory when he happened upon an archive of Sunday comics. He became obsessed with the idea of reproducing a full-sized volume of the work for modern audiences.

When he finally decided to make good on this plan in 2005, he met with significant obstacles — not the least of which was the 16 inch by 22 inch original page size, larger than any commercial binding equipment could handle. Though supportive of the idea, not a single publisher or distributor said they could commit to such an unusual project. He’d have to publish and sell the edition himself.

Maresca had more in mind than just the size of the book. He wanted to faithfully recreate the reader’s experience of 100 years ago, down to the greenish-grey background color of the newsprint. On the 100th anniversary of the strip, Little Nemo in Slumberland: So Many Splendid Sundays! was completed as a hand-bound full size edition, with 110 Sunday episodes. In the process, Maresca had developed a totally unique approach to restoring and presenting original comics.

I interviewed Maresca for an article in the Winter 2006 issue of ValueRich magazine at the time of the book’s release. Maresca explained that his original intention was to simply publish a single limited edition. But response to the book was so enthusiastic that he realized the potential for a new business, and Sunday Press was born.

Today, two editions of the original Nemo book have sold out, receiving numerous awards including the 2006 Will Eisner Award for Best Publication Design and two Harvey Kurtzman Awards. Sunday Press has also published a 16 inch by 11 inch book of McCays earlier Little Sammy Sneeze series and a 16 inch by 22 inch book, Sundays with Walt and Skeezix, a collection of the best of Frank King’s early Gasoline Alley Sunday comics, beginning with the very first episode in 1921.

And now, Sunday Press has released a second giant hardcover volume, Little Nemo in Slumberland: Many More Splendid Sundays! with 115 more Windsor McCay pages, many of which have never been reproduced before. If you love art or comics it’s well worth the $125 cover price.

www.sundaypressbooks.com