New book from Philadelphia comic publisher pays tribute to ‘Little Nemo’ creator

The forthcoming book “Little Nemo: Dream Another Dream” is an anthology dedicated to cartoonist and illustrator Winsor McCay, whose work graced newspapers including the New York Herald a century ago. 

NewsWorks Tonight host Dave Heller spoke with Josh O’Neill, co-owner of Locust Moon Comics in West Philadelphia.  He’s also the editor and publisher of the book.

“The comic strip was a new invention still at that point,” said O’Neill. “And he was one of the true forefathers of the medium.”

One of McCay’s most famous comics, Little Nemo, was published weekly on a 16- by 21-inch broadsheet page.  “It was the most ambitious comic that had ever been created, and almost still is til this day,” O’Neill said.

The new book will be published in the large format, but will feature the drawings of cartoonists from around the world paying homage to McCay by contributing their own Little Nemo strips.

“The one thing we asked was that … in every Little Nemo strip, he wakes up at the end in bed,” said O’Neill.  “And so we just asked that every strip have a wakeup panel.”

In order to fund the project, O’Neill and his associates took to Kickstarter.

“We were trying to raise $50,000, which we set as low as possible just to pay for the printing, but we tripled what we needed to get,” he said. “We were trying to get $50,000,  and we got $155,000.”

The book is due out in October.