Staff Picks (October): Little Nemo — Dream Another Dream HC

Publisher: Locust Moon Press

If you had to list the icons of the American comic strip, Winsor McKay would be in your top 10, if not your top 5. His Little Nemo in Slumberland combined an ornate illustration style with whimsical and at times frightening stories told in the vibrant broadsheet of the Sunday funnies.

After a more than successful Kickstarter campaign Locust Moon Press has produced an excellent companion book to the Winsor McKay Little Nemo books published by Sunday Press books and Taschen as well as the new comic book series from IDW.

Little Nemo: Dream Another Dream is a tribute to the work of Winsor McKay as well as a showcase for many creators taking advantage of a format from the past and transfusing it with a modern perspective of comic strip storytelling.

Having recently reread the Sunday Press Book Nemo titles, I became more curious on how well the various creators on this project would do. After reading an advance copy of the book, any fears I could have had have been alleviated.

The work by such familiar creators such as Gerhard, Mark Buckingham, Paul Pope, P. Craig Russell, Marc Hempel, Mark Wheatley, Bill Sienkiewicz, Carla Speed McNeil, and Charles Vess, among many others, will have you spending days looking at their pages. There were a few artists I wasn’t as familiar with, but I enjoyed being introduced to their work in this book, particularly Yuko Shimizu.

I don’t know where in the world you will shelve a book this size as 16x21 just doesn’t fit with the graphic novels. If you have the Sunday press books or any of the IDW Artist edition books then please be sure to add this exceptional book to that collection.

~ Steve Leaf