Winsor McCay's son returns home from World War I

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Times Artist and His Soldier-Son

Washington Times March 11 1919

Winsor McCay, the famous cartoonist, whose drawings often appear on the editorial page of The Times, welcoming his son, Sergt. Robert Winsor McCay, jr., who returned from France recently with the Twenty-seventh New York Division. Sergeant McCay was awarded the British Military Medal for gallantry in action during the attack by the Twenty-seventh on the Hindenburg line last September. 

That one's fairly blurry, so here's a later, better print.

 

 

LITTLE NEMO HOME WITH WAR HONORS

4/26/1919 Yerington times.

Sergt. Robert Winsor McKay. Jr., son of Winsor McKay (sic), the cartoonist and creator of "Little Nemo,” lias returned from France with the British military medal won (luring the smash of the Twenty-seventh division on the Hindenburg line last September. Sergeant McKay, who was the inspiration for his father’s cartoon character some years ago, was a member of the headquarters troops of the Twenty seventh. He returned the other on the...

and finally, here's a War Bonds ad he drew from El Paso Herald, Oct 20, 1917.

 

Review: Sense of Humor exhibit at National Gallery of Art

by Mike Rhode

Sense of Humor: Caricature, Satire, and the Comical from Leonardo to the Present. Jonathan Bober, Andrew W. Mellon senior curator of prints and drawings; Judith Brodie, curator and head of the department of American and modern prints and drawings; and Stacey Sell, associate curator, department of old master drawings. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art. July 15, 2018 – January 6, 2019. https://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2018/sense-of-humor.html

The National Gallery of Art describes its first exhibit of cartoon art thusly:

Humor may be fundamental to human experience, but its expression in painting and sculpture has been limited. Instead, prints, as the most widely distributed medium, and drawings, as the most private, have been the natural vehicles for comic content. Drawn from the National Gallery of Art's collection, Sense of Humor celebrates this incredibly rich though easily overlooked tradition through works including Renaissance caricatures, biting English satires, and20th-century comics. The exhibition includes major works by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Jacques Callot, William Hogarth, James Gillray, Francisco de Goya, and Honoré Daumier, as well as later examples by Alexander Calder, Red Grooms, Saul Steinberg, Art Spiegelman, and the Guerrilla Girls.

James Gillray, Wierd-Sisters; Ministers of Darkness; Minions of the Moon, 1791

Any exhibit on humor that covers 500 years (from 1470 through 1997), two continents and at least five countries is going to have to deal with the vagaries of what humor actually is. Even within my lifetime, what is considered permissible humor in America has changed, sometimes drastically. The exhibit was divided into three galleries – according to their press release (available at the website) the first "focuses on the emergence of humorous images in prints and drawings from the 15th to 17th centuries. Satires and caricatures gained popularity during this era, poking fun at the human condition using archetypal figures from mythology and folklore. While not yet intended as caricatures of individuals, Italian works reflected the Renaissance interest in the human figure and emotion." To modern eyes, drawings of dwarves or grotesques do not really appear to be either humorous or a cartoon, but the curators make the arguments that the foundations of caricature and satirical cartooning are laid in this period. 

William Hogarth, Strolling Actresses Dressing in a Barn, 1738

The second gallery begins featuring artists that most of us would consider cartoonists as it "continues with works from the 18th and 19th centuries, when certain artists dedicated themselves exclusively to comical subjects." In this room one found a good selection of the British masters Hogarth, Rowlandson, Gillray and Cruikshank, as well as Goya and Daumier (and oddly enough the painter Fragonard who drew an errant lover hiding from parents in an etching, The Armoire). This is the most interesting part of the exhibit for historians of comics, and the strong selection of etchings and drawings is worth studying since one rarely gets to see the contemporary prints, or even the original drawings such as Cruickshank's pencil and ink drawing Taking the Air in Hyde Park (1865). The release also notes, "Included in the exhibition is Daumier's Le Ventre Législatif (The Legislative Belly) (1834), a famous image that mocks the conservative members of France's Chamber of Deputies," but the exhibit does not note that the sculptures Daumier also made of the Deputies is on permanent display in another gallery of the museum -- a lost opportunity.

The final gallery "focuses on the 20th century and encompasses both the gentle fun of works by George Bellows, Alexander Calder, and Mabel Dwight and the biting satire of Hans Haacke and Rupert García. Works by professional cartoonists such as R. Crumb, George Herriman, Winsor McCay, and Art Spiegelman are presented alongside mainstream artists like Calder, Roy Lichtenstein, Jim Nutt, and Andy Warhol." Of most interest were the McCay (Little Nemo in Slumberland: Climbing the Great North Pole) and Herriman (Ah-h, She Sails Like an Angel, 1921) originals, both of which are worth examining in detail. This section also showed the paucity of the NGA's collections in modern comic art. These are joined by a print by Art Spiegelman, and several Zap Comic books, recently collected and described in standard art historical terms:

Robert Crumb (artist, author), Apex Novelties (publisher)

Zap #1, 1968

28-page paperback bound volume with half-tone and offset lithograph illustrations in black and

cover in full color

sheet: 24.13 x 17.15 cm (9 1/2 x 6 3/4 in.)

open: 24.13 x 34.29 cm (9 1/2 x 13 1/2 in.)

National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of William and Abigail Gerdts

The fact that the Gallery still can not bring itself to use the word 'comic book,' the standard term as opposed to paperback bound volume, unfortunately shows that it has far to go in dealing with the twentieth century's popular culture rather than fine art. Still, the exhibit is interesting, and well-worth repeated viewings which are almost necessary to understand the material from the first four centuries of the show.

(This review was written for the International Journal of Comic Art 20:2, but this version appears on both the IJOCA and ComicsDC websites on November 16, 2018, while the exhibit is still open for viewing. For those not in DC, Bruce Guthrie has photographs of the entire exhibit at http://www.bguthriephotos.com/graphlib.nsf/keys/2018_07_29B2_NGA_Humor)

Did you miss the pre-SPX Little Nemo and Dylan Horrocks events?

Did you miss the pre-SPX Little Nemo and Dylan Horrocks events?

If so, not to worry. ComicsDC had people there covering them for you. We got audio recordings of both events. The Library of Congress filmed the Little Nemo presentation, and it'll eventually be on their website, but for now, you can listen to it here. Click on the title to be taken to an audio file.

  

DRAWING ON HISTORY - Little Nemo: Dream Another Dream

by Josh O'Neill, Andrew Carl and Chris Stevens of Locust Moon Press

Bruce Guthrie has photographs of their presentation on his website and you can follow along by syncing his pictures and the audio.






Dylan Horrocks was last at SPX in 1999, talking about his book Hicksville and bring a traveling exhibition with him.

He's back and better than ever. 

Dylan Horrocks - Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen - at Politics and Prose bookstore

by Dylan Horrocks

 

Impressions and photos of Baltimore Comic-Con day 3, Sunday

Gerhard and the Little Nemo book from Locust Moon

Sunday was a nice quiet day at the con. Plenty of energy, but it wasn't so crowded that you couldn't see the guests, or run into friends (such as Heidi MacDonald who requested this photo of Gerhard from Friday (Day 1 is here)). I bought the only print Gerhard brought (by accident) of his Little Nemo art. I'm not sorry.Gerhard's finishing work on Cerebus made Dave Sim's artwork sing.

My daughter and I cruised around and I got my Team Cul de Sac book signed by Rob Harrell and Jay Fosgitt. I saw two other Little Nemo-related modern items (by Fosgitt and Joel Gill) - it's odd how the character is making  a comeback.

Here's some shots. A few additional pictures can be seen on Flickr.

One joy for me was meeting Fred Hembeck and getting a Shadow sketch for him. I've loved his skewed take on comics history for thirty years.

Little Nemos by Gill and Fosgitt

Mike Rhode and Dean Haspiel

Denis Kitchen and Fred Hembeck

Rafter Roberts covers X-O Man-o-War

Big Planet Comics owners Peter and Jared

Fulcrum's Jess Townsend with books edited by local cartoonist (and ComicsDC'r) Matt Dembicki

Andy Runton's booth babe, AKA "Mom"

Photos from CARTooons second exhibit at University of District of Columbia

CARTooons second exhibit at University of District of Columbia. Curated by Teresa Roberts Logan and featuring Andrew Cohen, Michael Auger, David Hagen, Carolyn Belefski, Matt Dembicki, Steve Artley and Rafer Roberts.

Little Nemo animation entered into Library of Congress Registry

Winsor McCay's Little Nemo animation entered into Library of Congress Registry, reports the Associated Press on the Washington Post website.

The Library's press release says:

Little Nemo (1911)

This classic work, a mix of live action and animation, was adapted from Winsor McCay’s famed 1905 comic strip "Little Nemo in Slumberland." Its fluidity, graphics and story-telling was light years beyond other films made during that time. A seminal figure in both animation and comic art, McCay profoundly influenced many generations of future animators, including Walt Disney.

This is not the 1990s Japanese animation of course. Speaking of McCay, I had an original of one of his political drawings in my hands this weekend. Hoo-hah!

Another cartoon I'm not familiar with was added as well:

Quasi at the Quackadero (1975)

"Quasi at the Quackadero" has earned the term "unique." Once described as a "mixture of 1930s Van Beuren cartoons and 1960s R. Crumb comics with a dash of Sam Flax," and a descendent of the "Depression-era funny animal cartoon," Sally Cruikshank’s wildly imaginative tale of odd creatures visiting a psychedelic amusement park careens creatively from strange to truly wacky scenes. It became a favorite of the Midnight Movie circuit in the 1970s. Cruikshank later created animation sequences for "Sesame Street," the 1986 film "Ruthless People" and the "Cartoon Land" sequence in the 1983 film "Twilight Zone: The Movie."