Winsor McCay
Comic strips (1903–1911)

From January until November 1903, McCay drew an ongoing proto-comic strip for the Enquirer based on poems written by George Randolph Chester called A Tale of the Jungle Imps by Felix Fiddle. Before the last two installments appeared in print, McCay had moved to New York City to work for James Gordon Bennett, Jr. 's New York Herald, at first doing illustrations and editorial cartoons. He worked alongside comic strip pioneer Richard F. Outcault, who was doing the Buster Brown strip at the Herald. A rivalry built up between the two cartoonists which resulted in Outcault leaving the Herald to return to his previous employer, William Randolph Hearst at The New York Journal.

McCay's first continuing comic strip, Mr. Goodenough, debuted in the New York Evening Telegram on January 21, 1904. The formula for the strip was that a sedentary millionaire would seek ways to become more active, with embarrassing results. Sister's Little Sister's Beau, McCay's first strip with a child protagonist, lasted one installment that April, and his first color strip, Phurious Phinish of Phoolish Philipe's Phunny Phrolics, appeared in the Herald ' s Sunday supplement that May.

McCay's first popular comic strip was Little Sammy Sneeze. The strip starred a young boy whose sneeze would build panel by panel until it was released, with explosively disastrous results, for which he was usually punished or chased away by those affected. The strip debuted in July 1904 and ran until December 1906.

McCay's longest-running strip, Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, first appeared in The Evening Telegram in September 1904. The strip was aimed at an adult audience, and had no recurring characters. The characters that appeared in the strip would have fantastic, sometimes terrifying dreams, only to wake up in the last panel, cursing the Welsh rarebit they had eaten the night before, which they blamed for bringing on the dream. Rarebit Fiend was so popular that a book collection appeared in 1905 from publisher Frederick A. Stokes. It was adapted to film by Edwin S. Porter, and plans were made for a "comic opera or musical extravaganza" for stage that failed to materialize. McCay signed the Rarebit Fiend strips with the pen name "Silas", as his contract required that he not use his real name for Evening Telegram work.

The McCays had been living in Manhattan, close to the Herald offices; before 1905 they moved to Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn, New York, a seaside resort on Long Island. It was an hour commute from the Herald offices, but they believed it to be a better place to raise children. They lived at a number of addresses before settling into a three-story house at 1901 Voorhies Avenue, where McCay resided for the rest of his life. As his reputation grew, his employers allowed him to work from his home studio more often.

While still turning out illustrations and editorial cartoons daily, McCay began three more continuing strips in 1905. In January, he began The Story of Hungry Henrietta, in which the child protagonist visibly ages week by week, and eats compulsively in lieu of the love she craves from her parents. A Pilgrim's Progress by Mister Bunion was another "Silas" strip for The Evening Telegram, which ran from June 1905 until May 1909. Mr. Bunion spent each strip unsuccessfully scheming to rid himself of his suitcase, labeled "Dull Care".

McCay got "an idea from the Rarebit Fiend to please the little folk", and in October 1905 the full-page Sunday strip Little Nemo in Slumberland debuted in the Herald. Considered McCay's masterpiece, its child protagonist had fabulous dreams, interrupted each week with his awakening in the final panel. Nemo's appearance was based on McCay's son Robert. McCay experimented with formal aspects of the comics page: he made inventive use of timing and pacing, the size and shape of panels, perspective, and architectural and other details. The Herald was considered to have the highest quality color printing of any newspaper at the time; its printing staff used the Ben Day process for color, and McCay annotated the Nemo pages with precise color schemes for the printers.

Impresario F. F. Proctor approached McCay in April 1906 to perform chalk talks for the vaudeville circuit. For $500 per week he was to draw twenty-five sketches in fifteen minutes before live audiences, as a pit band played a piece called "Dream of the Rarebit Fiend". In his The Seven Ages of Man routine, he drew two faces and progressively aged them. His first performance was on June 11, 1906, in a show that also featured entertainer W. C. Fields. It was a success, and McCay toured with the show throughout 1907, while managing to complete his comic strip and illustration work on time, often working in hotel rooms or backstage.

As early as 1905, several abortive attempts were made to produce a stage version of Little Nemo. In mid-1907, Marcus Klaw and A. L. Erlanger announced they would put on an extravagant Little Nemo show for an unprecedented $100,000, with a score by Victor Herbert and lyrics by Harry B. Smith. It starred midget Gabriel Weigel as Nemo, Joseph Cawthorn as Dr. Pill, and Billy B. Van as Flip. Reviews were positive; it played to sold-out houses in New York and toured for two seasons. McCay brought his vaudeville act to each city where Little Nemo played. When the Keith circuit refused McCay to perform in Boston without a new act, McCay switched to the William Morris circuit, with a $100-a-week raise. In several cities, McCay brought his son, who as publicity sat on a small throne dressed as Nemo.

As part of an improvised story, Cawthorn introduced a mythical creature he called a " Whiffenpoof ". The word caught on with the public, and became the name of a hit song and a singing group. Despite the show's success, it failed to make back its investment due to its enormous expenses and came to an end in December 1910.

McCay displayed his social awareness in the last strip he created for the Herald, Poor Jake. Its title character was a silent laborer who worked thanklessly for a Colonel and Mrs. Stall, who exploit him. The strip ran from 1909 until spring 1911.

McCay was approached in early 1910 to bring his vaudeville show to Europe. McCay requested the Herald ' s permission, but the plans never materialized. His show stayed within the Eastern United States until he ceased performing in 1917. Biographer John Canemaker assumed McCay's request to tour Europe was turned down, and that the refusal added to McCay's growing frustration with the Herald. A distrust of big business became pronounced in McCay's work around this time, including a story arc in Little Nemo in which the characters visit a Mars oppressed by a greedy business magnate.
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