It is amazing what is associated with Bat Man.

One of my Christmas gifts this year was the new hardcover Little Nemo collection. Previous volumes of Winsor McCay's comic strip masterwork have been either incomplete, prohibitively expensive, or both. This book is the first full-color reprinting of all the Little Nemo strips from 1905-1914 (it omits a brief revival of the strip that occurred in the 1920s--I assume because the copyright on these later works has not yet expired). It's a wonderful volume, and very reasonably priced at $30 ($20 at Amazon). I simply can't recommend it enough.

For those who don't know, Winsor McCay was a pioneer of comic strips and animation. He was an extremely talented artist who often rendered intricately detailed drawings completely from memory--it is said that he could look at an object once and reproduce it perfectly on paper.

McCay practiced his art primarily in newspaper comics, a very new medium at the time. He produced a number of strips, but the one he is best known for is Little Nemo in Slumberland, which was later cancelled and reincarnated for another paper as Little Nemo in the Land of Wonderful Dreams. This story about a boy who visits a fantasy world in his sleeps gave McCay freedom to illustrate the most fantastic and bizarre stories he could imagine. Published only on Sundays, each installment of Little Nemo was a full-color, full-page spread crammed with richly detailed illustrations. To do the strips justice they must be viewed in a large format (the book I have is as tall as DC Comics' Absolute volumes, and still doesn't compare to the original print dimensions). Take a look at these sample pages and you'll see that Winsor McCay made the most intricately detailed comic strips to ever appear in a newspaper (click on each image to see a larger version that still doesn't do it justice).

That's not all. Winsor McCay was a pioneer of not just one, but two new 20th century artforms. He apparently claimed to have invented animation, which isn't strictly the truth, but very close to it. At the very least he created the style of hand-drawn animation that later defined the genre and directly influenced Walt Disney.

McCay's first films used his Little Nemo characters to demonstrate the kind of motion that was possible in animation. Here is an example, embedded within a comical live action film:

Next McCay produced Gertie the Dinosaur, credited as the first original character created for an animated film:

Though still drawn in a simple style, these films demonstrate elegantly fluid motion. They are particularly remarkable when you consider that this was before the invention of cel animation. That means that each frame had to be drawn completely on a single piece of paper, background and all (McCay sometimes had an assistant draw the background, but for the characters he drew every frame himself).

Winsor McCay's later films grew more complex and still look very good by today's animation standards. The Centaurs features characters who are very lifelike and realistic-looking:

But I think McCay's greatest achievement in animation must be his propaganda piece on The Sinking of the Lusitania. It is so realistic in every detail that it's hard to believe this is from the early days of animation. Just visually speaking, it's better than anything you'll find on TV today.

Fresh from the folks at one of my favorite new blogs, io9:

I can't wait.

Little Nemo: 1905-1914 by Winsor McCay