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Comic strip · original lettering, 1906
Little Nemo in Slumberland: Nemo Meets Flip
Winsor McCay·New York Herald, 1906·26 lines
The gates of Slumberland finally open and Nemo is walked in: registered, dressed, warned by everyone he passes not to wake up, and led towards the Princess. Then he meets Flip, who wears a hat that says WAKE UP and intends him to. Twenty-six lines, the most talk on any page of this shelf.
Two levels on one page
The speech balloons are short and plain, about A2. The story printed underneath further down is written newspaper English from 1906 and is a good deal harder. Read the balloons first and stop there if that is enough for today. The rest will still be here.
The harder layer
The story printed underneath
The running caption under the panels, in small type. This one is the hardest on the shelf: one sentence runs to seventy words and carries the whole feud between Slumberland and the Dawn family. Read the balloons first.
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BetaAudio read-along is new, and we’re still fine-tuning the word-by-word timing, so a word may drift now and then.
After waiting a whole week for the doors of Slumberland to open, Nemo's rare patience was rewarded. Some little parleying with the guard was necessary at first, then the arrival of the Candy Kid, and Nemo for the first time set eyes and meet inside the walls of this marvelously wonderful place. It took but a jiffy to arrange matters with the officials, who were cautious about just who might happen in unvouched for.
Then Nemo was prepared for the triumphant advance to the palace and Princess, where likewise preparations were being made. It is sad to think Nemo should discover his first enemy in Slumberland, but he did, in the person of a bad and brazen brat named Flip, an outcast relative of the Dawn family, arch enemies to Slumberland and its people, who feared to eject him because of the power the Dawn family to turn night into day by the aid of the Sun, a willing ally, and an awful disturber in the ceremonies held in this beautiful place.
He believed the Princess would fall in love with him once she should see him, when the truth was the sight of him with his big cigar and his impudent face was shockingly frightful. That Nemo should awake when he saw Flip was prophesied by some among the attendants, so when it happened they were not surprised; but Nemo was, and awoke trembling with rage.
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About this page
This is the page where Flip arrives, and he never really leaves: he becomes the other main character of the strip for years afterwards, first as the enemy and then as the travelling companion. He is drawn as everything a nice child is not, a cigar, a loud suit, and a hat with WAKE UP written on it, which in Slumberland is the worst thing anybody can say. Worth reading twice for a different reason than the other pages: the caption here is the longest and most tangled on the shelf, and the balloons above it say the same things in six words each. Set them side by side and you have the whole distance between written English and spoken English in 1906.
Scanned page from the Internet Archive, marked Public Domain Mark 1.0. Published 1906, so copyright has expired everywhere.
Check what you remember
5 quick questions about the page. Scroll up to re-read any time.
Question 1
What does Nemo have to do before he can go to the Princess?
Question 2
What is written on the desk in the registration office?
Question 3
Why is everyone afraid of Flip?
Question 4
The caption calls Flip a brazen brat. This means he is
Question 5
How does the page end?
0 of 5 answered
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