McCAY, (Zenas) Winsor

(1867-1934)

   US COMIC-strip artist and creator of animated cartoons, of seminal importance in both fields. His earliest years were obscure (it is not known where he was born; his name is sometimes given as Winsor Zenic McCay, and his year of birth as 1869 or 1871), but by 1889 he was employedin Chicago as an engraver in a printing firm, and during the 1890s he worked as a freelance poster painter and as an in-house artist at Cincinnati's Vine Street Dime Museum before, in 1898, starting hisnewspaper career by doing editorial cartoons for the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune. By 1900 WM had switched papers and was drawing his first comicstrip, Tales of the Jungle Imps, signed Felix Fiddle.His new interest in strips and success as a cartoonist for Life led to his moving in 1902 to New York, where he began to work for the two New York papers owned byJames Gordon Bennett (1841-1918): the New York Herald as WM and the New York Telegram as "Silas". A cascade of humorous allegories followed, including A Pilgrim's Progress by Mr Bunion, Hungry Henrietta, Poor Jake and Little Sammy Sneeze. 1904 saw the debut of WM's nightmarish Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend, which carried its characters into a variety of very frightening dyspepsia-generated dream experiences; it appeared in book form as Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend (graph coll 1905; rev 1973). The success of this strip inspired his masterpiece, Little Nemo in Slumberland, which appeared in the New York Herald (1905-11), then for William Randolph Hearst papers under the title In the Land of Wonderful Dreams (1911-14),then for the Herald-Tribune (1924-7) under the original title. The first sequence was the most innovative and inspired, and soon selections were reprinted as Little Nemo in Slumberland (graph coll 1909). Later titles included an adaptation by Edna Sarah Levine, Little Nemo in Slumberland * (1941) illus WM, and The Complete Little Nemo in Slumberland (graph coll1989-90) ed Richard Marschall, a definitive version in 4 vols of the 1905-11 strip, reproducing the original colours; a 5th vol, The Complete Little Nemo in Slumberland: In the Land of Wonderful Dreams:1911-1912 (graph coll 1991), also ed Marschall, was followed by a 6th vol, The Complete Little Nemo in Slumberland: In the Land of Wonderful Dreams: 1913-1914 (graph coll 1994) ed Bill Blackbeard, which together reprinted the second sequence. Many of the first-sequence episodes - all drawn in WM's florid, hallucinatory, meticulously crafted, architectonic,poster-like Art Nouveau style - were straightforward dream fantasies; but later sustained sequences - like those dealing with Shantytown, with Befuddle Hall, and with a voyage by airship into outer space during 1909 -intermittently displayed an sf-like verisimilitude; as pioneering explorations into the techniques of narrating complex visions through sequential drawings, the strip as a whole was of vital importance.While busy with Little Nemo, WM was also able to continue with other graphic work, including many individual drawings, those making up the Spectrophone series of visions of the future being of particular sf interest. After he moved to Hearst, he began concentrating on political cartoons from a conservative point of view; but continued to issue enormously detailed prophetic drawings involving vast airships, cityscapes and catastrophes. Some of these have been assembled as Daydreams \& Nightmares: The FantasticVisions of Winsor McCay (graph coll 1988) ed Richard Marschall.WM also took a central role in the development of the animated cartoon - indeed, some claim that he invented the art of animation. In whatever medium he worked, he drew with incredible speed; this gave rise to the vaudeville act he presented from 1906, during which he executed a series of 40 chalk drawings, one every 30 seconds, showing a man and a woman ageing while the orchestra played a suitable melody. From here it was a logical step to animation. With astonishing industry, he hand-painted each frame of his cartoons; beginning in 1909 he produced 10 short films: Little Nemo (1911), which required c4000 drawings; The Story of a Mosquito (1912; vtHow a Mosquito Operates); Gertie, the Dinosaur (1914), which required c10, 000 drawings; The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918), the most ambitious, requiring c25,000 drawings done in much more detail than in the earlier films; The Centaurs, a fantasy film, Flip's Circus and Gertie on Tour, these 3 being done c1918-21 and surviving only as fragments; and 3 Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend shorts, all released in 1921: The Pet, Bug Vaudeville and The Flying House. In The Pet household animals drink an elixir and swell to huge proportions; a 10-storey cat ravages a city and, KING-KONG-style, is assailed by airships. Bug Vaudeville is a SillySymphonies-style (but pre-Disney) fantasy. In The Flying House a couple, escaping their creditors, fit out their house with wings and a propeller and fly off into outer space where, inter alia, they meet a giant on the Moon. It is not certain why WM gave up animation after these successes,but it was possibly because he thought - wrongly, as was soon proven by Felix the Cat and Walt Disney's Alice and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit - thatanimation, as an artform, was a deadend street to whose end he had come. He continued to produce newspaper strips and illustrations, however, untilthe end of his life.

   JC/JGr/SW

   Further reading: "Winsor McCay" by John Canemaker in The American Animated Cartoon: A Critical Anthology (anth 1980) ed Danny Peary and Gerald Peary; Winsor McCay: His Life and Art (1987) by John Canemaker; Comic Artists (1989) by Richard Marschall.