any of you, reading the title above, will probably think, "What other Nemo?" I'm sure that some of you may immediately know which Nemo I'm referring to, but others will recall only the orphaned clownfish who starred in the 2003 Pixar film Finding Nemo. So let me explain, because it's important to remember that without that first Nemo, the more recent one would not exist—and a good case could be made that neither would any of the other animated films we've been enjoying since the start of the cinema.
The original Nemo was the creation of cartoonist Winsor McCay, born in 1869, who honed his artistic talent drawing posters for traveling circuses and dime museums. He went on to create the comic strips Little Sammy Sneeze and Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend, but the character for which he is most remembered is Little Nemo in Slumberland, who made his first appearance nearly a century ago in the Oct. 15, 1905, edition of the New York Herald. Each episode—in a large ornate, magnificently executed page that is heartbreaking to consider in these days of ever-shrinking Sunday comics sections—the sleeping child would have a surreal adventure in his dreaming wonderland, yet always return to reality in the last panel.
Little Nemo's connection with science fiction cannot be denied. Joe Shuster, the artist who, with his writer friend Jerry Siegel, created the world's most famous alien, Superman, credits the strip with inspiring him to draw fantastic comics of his own. Of all the comic strips he read as a child, he has said, "My sharpest memory is of Little Nemo. It was a very imaginative strip, and it even had a touch of science fiction in it. It had marvelous scenes—Winsor McCay's depiction of the city of the future, the planets, all the things I loved. That was among the things that turned me on to fantasy and science fiction."
McCay, who was already enormously successful as a cartoonist, was not content to let his creations stay motionless on newsprint. For years, he worked a vaudeville act with a chalkboard, entertaining audiences with speed-drawing accompanied by comic patter. Eventually, he created a new art form when (and this might be apocryphal) McCay made a bet with a fellow cartoonist that he could cause his most famous creation to move upon the screen. To accomplish this, McCay did what no sane animator today would dream of doing. In 1911, he painstakingly made 4,000 different drawings of Little Nemo and his friends. He photographed each one and then hand-colored the print. With that, McCay became, as he was to bill himself on later films, the "Inventor of the Animated Drawing." (To contrast, Walt Disney's first films were still a decade away, and Steamboat Willie, the short that introduced Mickey Mouse, wasn't to premiere until 1928.)
Founder of a club of idiots
In 1914, McCay took the new medium even further and animated Gertie the Dinosaur using an astonishing 10,000 drawings—and in the days before cel animation this meant that he had to draw the same background 10,000 times! McCay even incorporated this cartoon into his vaudeville act. He would stand by the screen and order the cheery dinosaur to obey his commands, at one point stepping off the stage and into the cartoon itself, to be carried around in Gertie's mouth.
I'd been hearing about these early animated films since I was a kid, but I never had a chance to see them myself until I received a copy of Image Entertainment's recent DVD release of Winsor McCay's The Master Edition. Its Little Nemo was taken from the only 35mm print in existence, and its Gertie was lovingly restored from four prints. The DVD, which contains every film by McCay that has survived, must be seen to appreciate how far we have come and whose shoulders it is on which modern animation stands. In an era when teams of hundreds of animators create our current cinematic dreams, the thought of one dedicated artist hunched over a drawing board seems almost as prehistoric as Gertie herself. And yet that's just what began the march to today, not just toward this century's Nemo, but to all of the effects-laden movies of our time.
In 1926, McCay wrote to a friend, "The greatest contributing factor to my success was an absolute craving to draw pictures all the time," and for McCay it was indeed the art, not the business, that came first. Famed caracturist Al Hirschfeld once reported an anecdote told to him by George W. Bonty, the art director of the newspaper in which Little Nemo in Slumberland had made its first appearance. After Bonty saw McCay's initial animated cartoon, the man pleaded with McCay to patent his art form of the animated film before anyone else jumped in to exploit it. McCay supposedly replied, "Any idiot that wants to make a couple of thousand drawings for a hundred feet of film is welcome to join the club."
And what a club it has turned out to be ...
Imagine that—the man who predated Disney, and who perhaps could have been Disney had he so desired, instead chose not to be. He decided instead to return to his newspaper strips, which continue to be honored long after his lifetime. (For example, in 1995, Little Nemo even appeared on a United States postage stamp.) So as you head to the theater to see your next animated film, or prepare to pop Finding Nemo into the DVD player one more time, pause for a moment to remember the man who first showed that it could be done, one drawing at a time.
Scott Edelman started his trek to the editor-in-chief position at Science
Fiction Weekly decades ago, when he began working as an assistant editor at
Marvel Comics. Between these two positions, this four-time Hugo Award nominee in
the category of Best Editor was the founding editor of the
award-winning magazine Science Fiction Age, in addition to editing
Sci-Fi Universe, Sci-Fi Flix and Satellite Orbit. Currently, he also edits SCI
FI, the official magazine of the SCI FI Channel. His most recent short story appears in the new anthology Quietly Now: A Tribute to Charles L. Grant.
