This is our twelfth and (I think) final card in the Little Nemo series, published by Raphael Tuck. You know the game ... can you identify the Little Nemo strip from which the image was snatched? Or, is it an original penned right out of the noggin of the anonymous Tuck's artist?
The other big question: we've published 12 cards here at Stripper's Guide, and I believe my cupboard is bare. Are there any others that we've missed?
Looking at this with sarcastic modern eyes: Nemo is appearing before an enthusiastic audience composed almost exclusively of pretty ladies, several of whom are proffering bouquets or waving lanterns with his name. Would-be valentines. But Nemo, looking coy and maybe even blowing a kiss, appears focused on the lone man holding up flowers. And he's holding hands with his buddy, the two of them in costumes Buster Brown would mock. Certainly no such subtext was intended, or subtext of any kind, this being well within the precious sentimentality of the strip and the era. But it does read funny now.
ReplyDeleteThis is based on May 13, 1906.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.comicstriplibrary.org/display/179
Brian ... thanks for the ID!
ReplyDeleteDBenson ... strangely enough I am presently slogging my way through a couple of "scholarly" books on early comics, and the authors both do exactly what you're talking about -- treating 2% probabilty subtexts as if they are outright definitive subject matter. I think in academia the need to say something new and 'important' about these mouldy oldies is encouraging all sorts of ridiculous notions. As Freud said (or should have), "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."
--Allan