Das goldene Zeitalter
Comics scholar Jeet Heer called "Rarebit Fiend" "perhaps the most bizarre newspaper feature in American history". Merkl notes examples of the strip presaging ideas and scenes in later media: the strip includes scenes in which a man kicks a dog, slaps a woman, beats a blind man, and throws another woman out a window, as in Luis Buñuel's film "L'Age d'Or" (1930); and giant characters let loose in the big city, climbing and damaging buildings and subway trains, as in "King Kong" (1933). Merkl compares the strip for March 9, 1907, in which a child's bedroom becomes a lion-infested jungle, to the 1950 Ray Bradbury story "The Veldt", and the strip from September 26, 1908, depicting a stretchable face, to Salvador Dalí's surrealist painting "Soft self-portrait with fried bacon" (1941) and the cosmetic surgeries in Terry Gilliam's "Brazil". Stephen R. Bissette compares a strip featuring elevators flying from buildings and other scenes to the 2005 Tim Burton take on "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory".