Today in pulp I'm looking at a rather splendid Modernist and Surrealist comic strip from 1904: Dream of the Rarebit Fiend! #FridayFeeling
Dream of the Rarebit Fiend was written and illustrated by cartoonist Winsor McCay, who was already busy in 1904 illustrating Little Sammy Sneeze for the New York Herald.
Little Sammy Sneeze was already showing McCay's talent for bringing the ideas of Modernism into cartoons. Sammy often ended up breaking the fourth wall or crashing through the panel borders.
In 1904 McCay proposed a new strip for the Herald, one that featured the strange world of dreams and the unconscious. They agreed, but with one proviso...
Rather than featuring a 'tobacco fiend,' as McCay had initially suggested, the protagonist would instead partake of the cheese-heavy toasted snack Welsh Rarebit.
The change may have been influenced by Welsh Rarebit Tales by Harle Oren Cummins, a 1902 anthology of weird stories. Ogden Nash and Lewis Carroll have also been suggested as influences for McCay's work.
Dream of the Rarebit Fiend first appeared in the New York Evening Telegram in September 1904, and new strips were published two or three times a week. McCay's formula for these was always the same...
The panels would expand on a strange dream someone was having, with the oddities or themes of the dream growing and growing until the last panel, when the dreamer would wake and rue the eating of Welsh Rarebit before bed.
The strip was hugely successful and ran until 1911, before being revived in 1923 as Rarebit Reveries. Part of the reason was due to McCay's instinctive understanding of dream logic and symbolism.
Dream of the Rarebit Fiend really does read like a dream, showing us the unconscious manifesting its anxieties through strange symbolism and juxtapositions. It is also a great example of a one page graphic novel.
Winsor McCay is most famous for his other strip, Little Nemo in Slumberland, which wonderfully showcases his love of Modernism and his innovative use of repetition. However Rarebit Fiend is still my favourite, mostly because it's strips are endlessly fascinating.
A short film, Dream of a Rarebit Fiend, was made in 1906 by Edwin S. Porter based on one of McCay's strips. McCay later animated a number of his stories himself.
Many collections of Rarebit Fiend strips have been published over the years and they are well worth seeking out. The stories are fun, strange and elegantly told.
And that's it for my look at Dream of the Rarebit Fiend. Don't let it put you off toasted cheese!
More stories another time...
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What do Batman, Spiderman, Bettie Page, Madonna and women wrestlers have in common? Well I'll tell you: they all feature in the life of today's featured pulp artist.
Today I look back at the career of "the father of fetish" Eric Stanton!
Eric Stanton was born in New York in 1926. His childhood was marred by many illnesses, and confined to bed he learnt to draw by tracing comic books. He was fascinated by strong Amazonian women like Sheena, Queen of the Jungle and soon began creating similar cartoons.
After high school Stanton joined the Navy in 1944, putting his skills to use in drawing aircraft recognition cartoons. Post-war he got a job with cartoonist Gordon 'Boody' Rogers, creator of Babe: Amazon Of The Ozarks.
Given the weather is getting warmer I feel obliged to ask the following question: is it time to bring back the leisure suit?
Let's find out...
Now we all know what a man's lounge suit is, but if we're honest it can be a bit... stuffy. Formal. Businesslike. Not what you'd wear 'in da club' as the young folks say.
So for many years tailors have been experimenting with less formal, but still upmarket gents attire. The sort of garb you could wear for both a high level business meeting AND for listening to the Moody Blues in an espresso bar. Something versatile.
Today in pulp... Blade Runner! Let's look back at the classic 1982 movie and see how it compares to original novel.
"It's not an easy thing to meet your maker..."
Blade Runner is based on Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? However 'inspired' may be a better word, as the film is very different to the book.
In the novel Deckard is a bounty hunter for the San Francisco police. The year is 1992; Earth has been ravaged by war and humans are moving to off-world colonies to protect their genetic integrity. They are given organic robots to help them, created by the Rosen Association.