 Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini read Little Nemo in the children's magazine Il corriere dei piccoli, and the strip was a "powerful influence" on the filmmaker, according to Fellini biographer Peter Bondanella. Comics historian R. C. Harvey has called McCay "the first original genius of the comic strip medium" and in animation. Harvey said that McCay's contemporaries lacked the skill to continue with his innovations, so that they were left for future generations to rediscover and build upon.
