Google In Slumberland

Following a brief vacation and a week of intense and focused panel work, the Report returns.  (Though as one reader rightfully pointed out, "Report" is a generous term for something with such scheduling irregularity.  But it's too late to rename it now!)  Hopefully we'll be back to regularly scheduled programming for a while now, especially given the promise of Halloween report tricks and treats...
 
And speaking of treats, have you been to Google today, dear readers?  The doodle team has really outdone themselves this time, creating a brilliant tribute to celebrated cartoonist Winsor McCay  Of course, I don't expect Mr. McCay's name comes up in conversation often.  Today is likely the first time a lot of people have even heard of him, as his Wikipedia page and YouTube videos get soaring hits thanks to Google.  But it doesn't take much digging to find that Google has just about perfectly captured the style and substance of McCay's most famous creation, "Little Nemo In Slumberland."
 
Little Nemo, first published 107 years ago today, was a weekly comic strip printed in the New York Herald for six years and the New York American for three.  Where comic strip today carries the connotation of a three or four panel quick set-up and punchline, McCay's weekly strip existed on a much grander scale.  In 10 to 15 colorful panels, the pajama-clad Nemo would continue on his dream-quest to meet the Princess, daughter of King Morpheus.  Each strip would begin with Nemo going to bed, and his bed would often serve as a means of conveyance in the dream world.  Inevitably, each strip would end in the same manner, with Nemo being woken up and falling out of bed, often at an inopportune, cliff-hanger moment.
 
The brilliant colors, sprawling panels, walking bed, and total whimsy are all captured in the Google doodle, but Google is not the first to animate Nemo.  McCay himself created an animated version of his character in 1911, inspired to animation by one of his children's flipbooks.  The adaptation that I know, the one that introduced me to Little Nemo in the first place, was the 1992 film Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland, with a screenplay helmed by Christopher Columbus, now famous for directing the first two Harry Potter films.
 
Hopefully Google's doodle will inspire the webworld to seek out McCay's original work, available in a complete collection on Amazon. (Though it's apparently out of print and mega-expensive now. I say now because I own a copy that I snagged for like twenty bucks in a discount bin at a Barnes and Noble a while back.)  Even more hopefully, this will trigger the interest of comics artists to create Sunday strips that capture the imagination like McCay's did.
 
Non-comic strip fans have reason to celebrate the day, as they can kick it up a notch to wish a happy birthday to Emeril Lagasse.  Bam!