Daydreams and Nightmares by Winsor McCay

As we know: a joke is not funny, if you have to explain it. Vee Mack, (who retired from drawing comics before more than only a very few were published), delighted in drawing the comic first and then afterwards deciding what the caption would be. What is the mistake? If you sit down in a chair with your back straight and your elbows up against your waist, your hands can't possibly extend over your knees, unless you are a gibbon! Therefore, the oddity in the drawing was used to indicate to the viewer that the seated figure was so humiliated by his long arms that he was unwilling to speak to anyone and so retired to the attic in silence.

So the enigmatic tension that he created - while amusing to him - was lost to most everyone else who saw it. However, the mistake was only obvious to the artist. What does an artist do after he spends a couple of hours putting a drawing together and then discovers that he goofed up? In this case, the cartoonist (Vee Mack) used the mistake as the focus of the comic.

The book's most fascinating pages are those that present McCay's larger editorial and visionary drawings, which include visions of the future and graphic commentary about the times in which he lived - some of them are rather prophetic. Also, Marschall does a fine job of presenting a brief biography of McCay's life. I have read quite a lot of Little Nemo in Slumberland and Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend but Daydreams and Nightmares presents a much wider sampling of McCay's work in chronological order. I thought that I was fairly familiar with Winsor McCay's artwork, until I read this book. The second book is Daydreams and Nightmares - the Fantastic Vision of Winsor McCay, edited by Richard Marschall and published by Fantagraphics Books (1988). (By the way, the bug above is not one of Marley's. Besides the fact that each of the insects is a beautiful example of God's creative handiwork, Marley presents many of them in a mosaic arrangement that serves well to emphasize their iridescent colors and smooth forms. However, I suspect you will be more likely to want to frame them, rather than mail them. Each print is an over sized postcard on heavy glossy stock. The book is titled Exquisite Creatures - the Insect Art of Christopher Marley by Pomegranate Press, San Francisco (2005). By way of receiving two books for Christmas, I have two books to recommend to your reading: One of these books is a collection of brilliant photographs of insects, (some of whom look like friends of mine).

Daydreams and Nightmares by Winsor McCay