The best drawn comic strip of all time had an ignominious coda in 1947, when Winsor McCay's son took a last stab at revitalizing the Little Nemo franchise. In association with the Richardson Feature Service, Junior created 'new' Little Nemo comic strips by reformatting and recaptioning old panels from the original series.
The American comics section in 1947 would devote at best a tabloid page, or a half broadsheet page, to the feature, certainly a slap in the face to McCay's original glorious Sundays. Junior tried to rework his father's masterpieces, using just a few panels to tell a highly curtailed and simplified version of the story in the original strips. The result, while still breathtaking regardless of the maimed artwork, was a mere shadow, and an unfit tribute to the glory that was Little Nemo.
The strip didn't sell well, and it debuted on March 2 1947 in a mere handful of papers. The last known appearance was in the Long Island Press on December 28 of that year.
Was it this same stuff or something different that Bob McCay did for the comic books of the 1940s?
ReplyDeleteHi DD -
ReplyDeleteI'm not really trustworthy on comic book questions, but I do know that the material in Cocomalt Comics was new art by Bob (who really could ape dad's style pretty well). As for other appearances, I dunno.
--Allan