page_title: Winsor McCay
section_title: Comic strips (1903–1911)
hierarchical_section_title: Winsor McCay / Personal history / Comic strips (1903–1911)
caption_attribution_description: English: An episode of the Little Sammy Sneeze comic strip by American cartoonist Winsor McCay. In this strip Sammy destroys the comic strip panels with his sneeze.
context_page_description: Zenas Winsor McCay was an American cartoonist and animator. He is best known for the comic strip Little Nemo and the animated film Gertie the Dinosaur. For contractual reasons, he worked under the pen name Silas on the comic strip Dream of the Rarebit Fiend.
  From a young age, McCay was a quick, prolific, and technically dextrous artist. He started his professional career making posters and performing for dime museums, and in 1898 began illustrating newspapers and magazines. In 1903 he joined the New York Herald, where he created popular comic strips such as Little Sammy Sneeze and Dream of the Rarebit Fiend. In 1905 his signature strip Little Nemo in Slumberland debuted—a fantasy strip in an Art Nouveau style about a young boy and his adventurous dreams. The strip demonstrated McCay's strong graphic sense and mastery of color and linear perspective. McCay experimented with the formal elements of the comic strip page, arranging and sizing panels to increase impact and enhance the narrative. McCay also produced numerous detailed editorial cartoons and was a popular performer of chalk talks on the vaudeville circuit.
context_section_description: From January until November 1903, McCay drew an ongoing proto-comic strip for the Enquirer based on poems written by George Randolph Chester called A Tale of the Jungle Imps by Felix Fiddle.  Before the last two installments appeared in print, McCay had moved to New York City to work for James Gordon Bennett, Jr.'s New York Herald, at first doing illustrations and editorial cartoons.  He worked alongside comic strip pioneer Richard F. Outcault, who was doing the Buster Brown strip at the Herald.  A rivalry built up between the two cartoonists which resulted in Outcault leaving the Herald to return to his previous employer, William Randolph Hearst at The New York Journal.
  McCay's first continuing comic strip, Mr. Goodenough, debuted in The Evening Telegram on January 21, 1904.  The formula for the strip was that a sedentary millionaire would seek ways to become more active, with embarrassing results.  Sister's Little Sister's Beau, McCay's first strip with a child protagonist, lasted one installment that April, and his first color strip, Phurious Phinish of Phoolish Philipe's Phunny Phrolics, appeared in the Herald's Sunday supplement that May.
  McCay's first popular comic strip was Little Sammy Sneeze.  The strip starred a young boy whose sneeze would build panel by panel until it was released, with explosively disastrous results, for which he was usually punished or chased away by those affected.  The strip debuted in July 1904 and ran until December 1906.
  McCay's longest-running strip, Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, first appeared in The Evening Telegram in September 1904.  The strip was aimed at an adult audience, and had no recurring characters.  The characters that appeared in the strip would have fantastic, sometimes terrifying dreams, only to wake up in the last panel, cursing the Welsh rarebit they had eaten the night before, which they blamed for bringing on the dream.  Rarebit Fiend was so popular that a book collection appeared in 1905 from publisher Frederick A. Stokes.  It was adapted to film by Edwin S. Porter, and plans were made for a "comic opera or musical extravaganza" for stage that failed to materialize.  McCay signed the Rarebit Fiend strips with the pen name "Silas", as his contract required that he not use his real name for Evening Telegram work.
  The McCays had been living in Manhattan, close to the Herald offices; before 1905 they moved to Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn, New York, a seaside resort on Long Island.  It was an hour commute from the Herald offices, but they believed it to be a better place to raise children.  They lived at a number of addresses before settling into a three-story house at 1901 Voorhies Avenue, where McCay resided for the rest of his life.  As his reputation grew, his employers allowed him to work from his home studio more often.
  While still turning out illustrations and editorial cartoons daily, McCay began three more continuing strips in 1905.  In January, he began The Story of Hungry Henrietta, in which the child protagonist visibly ages week by week, and eats compulsively in lieu of the love she craves from her parents.  A Pilgrim's Progress by Mister Bunion was another "Silas" strip for The Evening Telegram, which ran from June 1905 until May 1909</ref>.  Mr. Bunion spent each strip unsuccessfully scheming to rid himself of his suitcase, labeled "Dull Care".
  McCay got "an idea from the Rarebit Fiend to please the little folk", and in October 1905 the full-page Sunday strip Little Nemo in Slumberland debuted in the Herald.  Considered McCay's masterpiece, its child protagonist had fabulous dreams, interrupted each week with his awakening in the final panel.  Nemo's appearance was based on McCay's son Robert.  McCay experimented with formal aspects of the comics page: he made inventive use of timing and pacing, the size and shape of panels, perspective, and architectural and other details.  The Herald was considered to have the highest quality color printing of any newspaper at the time; its printing staff used the Ben Day process for color, and McCay annotated the Nemo pag
caption: Little Sammy Sneeze, September 24, 1905
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