Although it is tempting to do so, it would be inaccurate to call McCay the father of modern cartooning or animation. Few comic strips followed the footsteps of Little Nemo in Slumberland or Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend: far more influential were strips like Krazy Kat, Bringing Up Father, and Mutt & Jeff. By the same token, McCay's animated films may be the first to be remembered as great, but it is the short films of Walt Disney that were closely watched and imitated by contemporaries. McCay can be compared, in a way, to George Washington: father of his country, but with no children of his own. McCay was a genius, but one without imitators and heirs.

In the early years of the 20th century, McCay was a cartoonist for various New York papers. Early strips of his, like Hungry Henrietta and Little Sammy Sneeze were each based on a single, constantly repeated gag: the tiny girl ate everything in sight, the boy sneezed cataclysmically, knocking down entire buildings. His Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend had much more variety: in this strip, a different character each week suffered nightmarish, surreal hallucinations after having eaten toasted cheese. Little Nemo in Slumberland, however, is his masterpiece. A tremendously large Sunday strip, comprising an entire newspaper page, Little Nemo illustrated the ongoing dreams of the young boy of the title, chronicling his adventures in "Slumberland," as he endeavored to enter the palace of King Morpheus and become the playmate of the princess. Each dream was to end in frustration, however, as the boy woke up in the final panel of every strip. Little Nemo was a vast surreal painting done in serial form. McCay's design and imagination within the strip are generally conceded today as being unrivaled.

Besides his cartooning work, McCay also won renown as a vaudeville performer. Thanks to his incredibly swift facility for drawing, he could produce 25 pictures in 15 minutes onstage. From this, it was not difficult for his contemporaries to imagine McCay drawing enough pictures to bring Little Nemo or other comic characters to life, thanks to the motion picture. After being challenged to do this by some of his cartoonist colleagues, McCay made 4000 drawings in a month's time to create his first animated film, Little Nemo. Though the film was more a demonstration of possibilities than a narrative film, it was only the first of 10 films which became increasingly sophisticated as time went on.

Only the first film and the later Flip's Circus were based on the Little Nemo comic strip. Three other films were based on Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend, while still others were entirely original creations, including Gertie the Dinosaur, which in surveys of animation history is generally regarded as the first great animated film. Unique among the ten is the tremendously serious propaganda film The Sinking of the Lusitania, paralleling McCay's own serious work as an editorial cartoonist.

Incidentally, it was McCay's work in editorial cartoons that led to the end of his animation work. In the 1920's, McCay worked for William Randolph Hearst, who demanded that McCay end his vaudeville and animation career, and limit his graphic work to the editorial page. This proved to be virtually the end of his career.

What of the films? Of the ten, three exist only in fragments: The Centaurs, Flip's Circus, and Gertie on Tour. The Centaurs appears to be no great loss: consisting only of a few scenes of centaurs milling about, it is considerably less interesting than the centaur episode from Fantasia (itself the least interesting segment of that classic film). It is too difficult to determine how good a film Flip's Circus was. The fragments of that film that still exist are far too short to give any indication of what that film was supposed to be like. Gertie on Tour, however, is a tremendous loss. Gertie in "modern" New York City is very funny in the brief snippets that survive: one can only imagine what the entire film was like. In any case, Gertie's mischievous personality, as established in Gertie the Dinosaur, is fully in evidence here.

Little Nemo, as stated before, is more a demonstration of the possibilities of animation than an animated film itself: we see the characters from the comic strip moving about, but there is no story to speak of. Perhaps most remarkable are some color segments: the film was hand-colored, frame by frame.

How a Mosquito Operates and Gertie the Dinosaur, McCay's films immediately following Little Nemo, are much more satisfying, if for no other reason because they actually tell a story. The former tells that of an ill-fated mosquito who dines on the blood of a sleeping man, the latter that of a shy dinosaur who has to be coaxed into performing for the public. Mosquito is rather monotonous and long, however (although the juxtaposition of stylized backgrounds and realistic characters are at least visually striking). Gertie is utterly charming and deserving of its reputation as the first great animated film. There were other animated films before Gertie, but Gertie herself was the first great character to be defined by moving drawings, the spiritual godmother of Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, and all the rest.

The Sinking of the Lusitania, so different from the rest of McCay's animated work, is arguably his greatest film. His scenes of German torpedoes slamming into the side of the doomed liner and her swift sinking are just as breathtaking and heart-breaking in their own way as were the sinking scenes in Titanic, almost eighty years later. A brilliant piece of film propaganda, it is one of the first such films ever made.

Bug Vaudeville, The Flying House, and The Pet are all part of a Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend series. While Bug Vaudeville is overlong and static (a man falls asleep and sees visions of giant, acrobatic bugs), the other two are gems. The Flying House is about a man who turns his house into an airplane to escape his creditors. Animated with extreme realism and beauty, the film captures the surrealism and sly humor of McCay's best newspaper work. The Pet is even better, one of McCay's best films. It concerns a woman who adopts a mysterious animal which quickly grows and grows, eating everything in sight, eventually becoming a rampaging, Godzilla-sized creature.

McCay's three best films, I believe, are The Pet, Gertie the Dinosaur, and The Sinking of the Lusitania (Gertie on Tour would probably have made this list if it existed in fuller condition today). It is worthwhile seeing all of McCay's films, however. Luckily, all seven of the complete films, as well as surviving fragments of the three others, are available on videocassette. They are virtually must-see viewing for any serious fan of animation, early film history, or early comic art. McCay may have had no forbears and no followers, but as a glorious, sui generis anomaly, he deserves watching.

Four stars: The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918), The Pet (1921)
Three-and-a-half stars: Gertie the Dinosaur (1914)
Three stars: Little Nemo (1911), The Flying House (1921)
Two-and-a-half stars: How a Mosquito Operates (1912)
One-and-a-half stars: Bug Vaudeville (1921)
Incomplete, not rated: The Centaurs (1921), Flip's Circus (1921), Gertie on Tour (1921)

Copyright 1998 by Dale G. Abersold