4/24/2021 0 Comments Dream Of The Rarebit Fiend Comic
I urge any relatively wealthy Myrant readers to consider purchasing and donating a copy or copies to your local libraries while supplies last (impressing upon any library accepting the donation the scarcity, uniqueness and value of the book, and some assurance it will remain in their respective special collections andor reserve shelves).Myrant is just that: MYrant I post daily, for the most part, except when deadlines and workload constrict my time.If youre going to San Diego Comicon, scroll to the end of todays post for booth info -- yes, you can check out the book yourself if youre going to be there If this is all new to you, read on, please N ow and then, a truly essential book surfaces.This is one of those, and this post is about one of these essential books.
In January of this year, fellow comics and animation fan Miron Murcury sent a joint email to Ulrich Merkl and myself, urging us to get in touch with each other, with this link to Ulrich s site in the Comic Art for Fans galleries venues. Dr. Merkl was hard at work on a new book, aiming for a March 2007 publication, and his description of the project read, quite literally, like a dream. This dream came true -- and I urge those of you who can possibly afford the 133.00 (cost of the book and shipping; discounted if you can roust a single order for two or more copies) to order this glorious book for yourself now, today, while you can, via this website. If youre going to San Diego Comicon this week, you can see copies there -- display copies can be browsed at Bud Plant s and Peter Maresca s (2646) booths -- in any case, dont dawdle Once this book is out of print, it will be far dearer in price. I ts impossible to describe the magnitude and scope of the book, or the quality of McCay s work therein. Rarebit Fiend was arguably the seminal comic strip of the early 1900s, the wellspring for much of what we take for granted today as cartoonists, comic readers, and in the pop culture as a whole -- regardless of where, on the creationproductionconsuming food chain, you reside. McCay s skills and ingenuity are legend, and his draftmanship remains second to none -- simply put, Dream of the Rarebit Fiend is one of the essential comics creations of the 20th Century, and Ulrich s book is the ideal showcase for the entirety of Dream (what isnt in print of the strips is on the bonus DVD; its all here, all 821 strips, and much, much more). Dream Of The Rarebit Fiend Comic Series Remains TheWarning: Do not drop this book on your cat W insor McCay s Dream of the Rarebit Fiend is the precursor to all dream comics, a genre that has become central to dream research (and near and dear to the heart of one of my best friends, Rick Veitch, whose Rarebit Fiends series remains the high-water mark of its peculiar but remarkable genre). But theres so much more to say -- McCay single-handedly invented and refined many devices the entire comics medium relies upon to this day; its almost impossible to find a basic storytelling, graphic or sequential panel tool McCay did not invent, refine or put to use in the Rarebit canon. ![]() For almost 20 years, via my Journeys Into Fear slide lecture series, Ive discussed and illustrated a number of McCay Rarebit Fiend innovations that resonate through the horror genre, including first-person point of view comics narratives. Many of these remain primal experiences revisited in the reading of Ulrich s Rarebit Fiend collection, and this alone makes this book an essential volume for any media scholars library. The historic beginning of the ever-growing creature archetype in the 20th Century: McCay s delightful distillation of mythic monsters threatening for their unchecked growth in this March 8, 1905 installment of Rarebit Fiend inspired his 1921 animated film The Pet. As Ulrich notes, this may have also been inspired by one of Edward Lear s illustrations in the 1870 The Book of Nonsense. Note this scan is not from Ulrich s book, but rather a pre-restoration-process scan; the version printed in the book is much sharper. A note for Myrant regulars: Given my own predeliction for dinosaur and giant monster literature, movies, comics and media, Ill just note (in the context of this blogs ongoing Tyrant Media Guide ) that one of the tropes McCay seemed to have introduced for the 20th Century was the ever-growing creature archetype, which has many subsequent incarnations, from numerous science-fiction pulp stories to Tex Avery s King-Size Canary to monster movies like 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957) and monster comics like Marvel s Amazing Adventures ( Stan LeeJack KirbyDick Ayers s Sserpo in Amazing Adventures 6, 1961). In fact, via his animated version of that particular Rarebit Fiend strip, The Pet (1921), McCay introduced the entire giant monster attacks metropolitan city genre, predating Willis OBrien s spectacle of a Brontosaurus sic attacking London for the climax of The Lost World (1925; in the source novel, Conan Doyle only had Professor Challenger s specimen pterodactyls fly the coop into the London skies). At the time I ordered the book two weeks ago, there were only about 700 copies left. Dont wait Again, heres Dr. Merkl s website, the only place to order this limited edition beauty. I have already seen to it that a copy now resides in The Schulz Library at The Center for Cartoon Studies, and am shipping a copy to Lea Ann Alexander and her associates at the HUIE Library at Henderson State University, as part of the Stephen R. ![]()
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